Factors affecting spatiotemporal behaviour in the European brown hareLepus europaeus: a meta‐analysis

Abstract

1. The European brown hare Lepus europaeus is the most widely distributed hare species of the world, being naturally present throughout Eurasia and introduced as a game species in most continents. Despite the importance of this lagomorph for both management and conservation, a quantitative summary of its spatiotemporal behaviour is still lacking. 2. Taking advantage of 51 selected studies conducted throughout the native range of the hare and spanning the last 40 years, we used meta-analytic approaches in order to: 1) investigate home range size in relation to ecological factors; 2) test preference across major habitat types; and 3) provide a quantitative synthesis of hare activity patterns. 3. Temporally adjusted home range size of hare populations decreased with increasing cropland cover (cereal and non-cereal crops), suggesting that home range size gets smaller with increasing food availability, and predicting that hare populations living in absence of crops would double their mean home range size compared to those inhabiting areas covered entirely by cropland.Hare populations where more males were sampled showed larger home ranges, in line with the polygynous mating system of this species. 4. Hares preferred cropland and grassland over other habitats for foraging, thus selecting the two habitats characterised by the majority of trophic resources for this species. Yet, habitat types were used proportionally to their availability overall, except for the general avoidance of human settlements. Hares were mainly nocturnal, with the lowest activity during daytime, when activity was about one third of that at night, and showed moonlight avoidance, probably to limit encounters with nocturnal predators. Our work emphasises the importance of open habitats and especially croplandfor this lagomorph, but also suggests some plasticity in the use of space and time by hares. Such plasticity may help this mammal to cope with future environmental changes, providing that landscape heterogeneity is maintained.

Temporal Activity Patterns of the Eurasian Beaver and Coexisting Species in a Mediterranean Ecosystem

“…Throughout the year, the Eurasian beaver not only avoids diurnal hours, but also significantly reduces its activity on bright moonlight nights. This behaviour is adopted by some prey species [ 14 , 55 , 56 , 57 ] to limit encounters with their predators and with poachers. Where natural predators do not occur, the Eurasian beaver is mainly active on bright moonlight nights, allowing human avoidance, but with a foraging success improvement [ 33 ] since its vision is not well-adapted to movements in the dark.…”

“…The arrival of new species (both native and introduced) in an area may locally disrupt this equilibrium, forcing new behavioural adaptations in coexisting species [ 7 , 13 ]. In turn, the alteration of spatiotemporal patterns of activity can increase species’ exposure to local threats, including predation and interspecific competition [ 14 , 15 , 16 ].…”

Co-occurrence patterns and habitat selection of the mountain hare, European hare, and European rabbit in urban areas of Sweden

“…Both European hares and rabbits were introduced to Sweden (Artdatabanken 2020). European hares are typically associated with agricultural lowland (Mori et al 2022), and their densities have been found to be positively correlated with higher temperatures and lower precipitation (Leach et al 2016;Smith et al 2005). While European hare populations have been declining in large parts of Europe since 1960 due to agricultural intensification (Smith et al 2005), they might still be expanding their distribution in Sweden (Jansson and Pehrson 2007).…”

Parasitological Survey in European Brown Hare (Lepus europaeus Pallas, 1778) Breeding Facilities in Southern Italy

“…The European brown hare ( Lepus europaeus Pallas , 1778; hereafter hare) is the leporid with the widest global distribution [ 1 ]. Italian populations were significantly altered starting from the twentieth century by its restocking with captive-bred or allochthonous animals in order to maintain viable populations for hunting purposes [ 2 ].…”