Red fox, a canine predator inhabiting in the grassland of eastern Inner Mongolia, is positioned near the top of the food chain. It plays an important role in rodent control. Consequently, research on red fox helps scientists accumulate basic data and offers a scientific basis for the protection of grassland ecosystems and red fox management. Red fox habitat selection in the Dalai Lake Natural Reserve was systemically studied from November 2009 to January 2010 and from March to April 2010. Line transects were used for 101 plots known to be used by the red fox and for 144 comparison plots. We processed our field data and analyzed them using principal component analysis. Using landform analysis of the study area and other relevant research work, we defined seven significant factors influencing habitat: vegetation type, sheltering class, food abundance, snow depth, distance to water sources, distance to fences, and distance to residential areas. Our results

Wolves were once widely distributed throughout China. The number of Chinese wolves has drastically declined in recent years as a result of environmental destruction and habitat loss. At present, wolves in China are mainly distributed in sparsely populated western and northern regions of the country. To protect this species, an understanding of genetic diversity and phylogenetic relationships of wolf populations in China is necessary. In this study, we analyzed the partial mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) D鄄loop region and the Cyt b (Cytochrome b) gene of wolves originating from four distinct geographical populations in Xinjiang, Qinghai, Inner Mongolia, and Jilin. Using standard molecular biology techniques, we generated sequences of the mtDNA control region hypervariable region I (HVR I) from 44 wolves, and sequences of the Cyt b gene from 40 wolves. The resulting 582鄄bp HVR I sequence alignment contained 51 variable sites, which corresponded to 8.76% polymorphic loci. Similarly, 31 variable sites, all base substitutions, were identified in the aligned Cyt b sequence data set. We detected 16 haplotypes among the 44 HVR I gene sequences. The Inner Mongolian population and the population from Jilin were found to share the same HVR I haplotype. When this data set was combined with previously generated Chinese