Abundancia relativa de la zorra gris Urocyon cinereoargenteus (Carnívora: Canidae) en la zona centro de Veracruz, México

Abstract

Relative abundance of the gray fox Urocyon cinereoargenteus (Carnívora: Canidae) in Veracruz central area, Mexico. The gray fox, Urocyon cinereoargenteus, is a medium-size canid widely distributed in México. Most studies on this species focus on habitat use, home range, diet, intraguild competence, and lanscape distribution between urban and rural sites. In central Veracruz, gray foxes are present in fragments of cloud forest and in shaded coffee plantations; nevertheless, its abundance has not yet been compared among other vegetation types found in the area, such as sugarcane plantations. In this study we described gray foxes abundance variations using 500 m transects, among sugarcane plantations, shaded coffee plantations, and cloud forest fragments throughout eight months, by scat counting in three sites of each cover type. We reported the relative abundance index for each cover type and each month, and evaluated its relationship with four landscape features: (a) shade percent, (b) trail density, (c) human population density, and (d) habitat juxtaposition, in influence areas of 450 ha around sampling sites. Abundance comparison among cover types showed lower abundances in cloud forest fragments and higher abundances in coffee and sugarcane plantations. No significant differences were found throughout months (p = 0.476). We proposed that higher abundances in plantations may be related to the presence of rodent plagues and fruit trees which offer food resources to gray foxes. The evaluation of landscape features showed that only medium-impact trail density and human population density were positively correlated with gray fox abundance; fact that demonstrates that this canid can coexist with humans in rural sites. We highlight the gray fox capacity to take advantage of heterogeneous landscapes. Rev. Biol. Trop. 64 (1): 221-233. Epub 2016 March 01.

Ecology of a versatile canid in the Neotropics: gray foxes (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) in Belize, Central America

“…Our study demonstrates that tropical gray foxes are as flexible in their exploitation of human-influenced landscapes and resources as those inhabiting the temperate zone. However, our camera-trap data suggest that they are not habitat generalists in this region of the tropics, avoiding the interior of the dominant habitat, tropical moist broadleaf forest, sticking to the forest edge, and preferring the mosaic landscape of well-vegetated savannah, pine forest (Davis et al 2010), and agricultural lands (Gallina et al 2016). Potentially, they readily colonize new areas if suitably transformed by human activity, exploiting rodents and food waste associated with human presence, as exemplified by the presence of foxes at the Visitors' Center within the tropical broadleaf forest of a large protected area where they were absent from the interior.…”

“…Gray foxes thrive in both the natural as well as the humandominated landscapes of North America (Harrison 1997;Rountree 2004;Kapfer and Kirk 2012;Nogeire et al 2013;Deuel et al 2017a;Lombardi et al 2017), making them a versatile and adaptable species. Further south, they have been detected in sugarcane and coffee plantations in Mexico and upland pine forest in Belize, but generally little is known about their ecology in broadleaf forest or their adaptability to human activities in the tropics (Davis et al 2010;Gallina et al 2016).…”

Limitations of current knowledge about the ecology of Grey Foxes hamper conservation efforts

“…A 15year study in Mississippi using trapper harvest records reported stable trends (Lovell et al 1998). Other studies evaluating temporal variation in RAB or occupancy of this species were conducted over relatively short (<3 year) periods (Chamberlain et al 1999;Cunningham et al 2006;Gallina et al 2016). In contrast, Bauder et al (2020) found evidence of declines in Grey Foxes in Illinois over 43 years and two studies in the midwestern USA found that they were the least prevalent species in the native carnivore community (Lesmeister et al 2015;Rich et al 2018).…”

“…Distributions of RAB estimates from camera trap and transect studies were generally similar across ecoregions (Figure 3). Studies with relatively high RAB occurred in multiple ecoregions including the Temperate Sierras (Cunningham et al 2006;Gallina et al 2016) Temperate Forests (Chamberlain et al 1999), Tropical Wet Forests (Davis et al 2011), Mediterranean California (Allen et al 2017, Great Plains (Karlin & De La Paz 2015), and Marine West Coast Forests (Eriksson et al 2019). To further explore geographic variation in abundance of Grey Foxes, we calculated the rank-order of RAB or occupancy across all mammalian carnivores detected in the study, including grey fox.…”

Impacts of Habitat Degradation on Tropical Montane Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services: A Systematic Map for Identifying Future Research Priorities

“…There were a small number of TMF articles that have investigated how populations respond to habitat degradation. From these studies, habitat fragmentation was shown to reduce the population size of birds and foxes (Husemann et al, 2015;Gallina et al, 2016). For example, the effective of population sizes of the mountain white-eye (Zosterops poliogaster) in East Africa were higher in larger and interconnected forest patches (Husemann et al, 2015).…”