First observations of nest attendance behavior by wild maned wolves, Chrysocyon brachyurus

Abstract

In many species of canids the male's role in reproduction extends to providing extensive or some parental care to his offspring. Maned wolves are a monogamous canid species whose males have been observed providing parental care to their offspring in captivity, but no field observations exist. We observed a wild pair of maned wolves at their nest site in a period soon after the female had given birth for a total period of 65 days. We made five observation sessions with an average of 3-4 days each separated by approximately 2 weeks. Direct visual observations of maned wolves were made each 30 min during the hours of darkness (17:00-07:00) using night-vision binoculars and confirmed by VHF radiotelemetry. During observations we recorded the location of the male and the female in relation to the nest (i.e., in the nest, nearby or long way from the nest). The results showed that the female spent more than 60.44% of her time in or near the nest. The male spent 28.90% of his time in or near the nest. There was a positive significant correlation between the female and the male in terms of the amount of time spent in or near the nest (P<0.01). The maned wolves showed a strong temporal variation in time spent in or near the nest. In conclusion, our data show that wild male maned wolves--probably--provide parental care through provision of food to their female and presumed offspring rather than "babysitting."

The Maned Wolves of Noel Kempff Mercado National Park

“…dISCuSSIOn hoMe ranGe size Telemetry-generated maned wolf home range areas reported in the recent literature are in the same size range that we found for Los Fierros (Coelho et al, 2008;Jácomo et al, 2009;Melo et al, 2007;Rodrigues, 2002), suggesting similar ecological conditions. The largest such study, of 37 resident adult MW studied by Jácomo et al (2009) of our study, two MW co-occupying the same range used areas of 40 km 2 (vHF, perhaps an underestimate) and 52 km 2 : more like the smaller ranges of 20-40 km 2 reported by Dietz (1984) and 40-50 km 2 reported by Trolle et al (2007) and Melo et al (2009). In our study, increases in range sizes after 2005 corresponded to a decline in prey numbers (Emmons, 2009), which suggests an influence of resource density on range size, as we report in more detail in Chapters 4 and 5.…”

“…Maned wolf pairs cooperate to provision young (Bestelmeyer et al, 1996;Melo et al, 2009;Rasmussen and Tilson, 1984). Our brief data sets indicated that in one case the male did not interact at all with the newborn litter or their mother, but when the young were about a month old, he showed repeated, regular return to a focal area near the birth den, consistent with provisioning.…”

“…Their home range size varies from about 25 to 100 km 2 (Dietz, 1984;Jácomo et al, 2009). Diet and home range sizes have been well documented in multiple populations Rodden et al, 2004;, but only a few details are recorded of the interactions or life histories of free-ranging individuals in any part of their range (Melo et al, , 2009. Current knowledge of the species was summarized in Rodden et al (2004), and recent important additions include Melo et al (2007Melo et al ( , 2009, Coelho et al (2007Coelho et al ( , 2008 , and Jácomo et al (2009).…”

“…May to October maned wolf travel distances reported in Minas Gerais by Melo et al (2007) from 12 daily fixes (2-hourly) for a pair and subadult female, were much shorter than those we recorded, 9 km/day for a female and only 7 km/day for a male (not significantly different). These shorter trajectories may result from half as many locations per day, coupled with small home range sizes that produce more turns (40-50 km 2 ; Melo et al, 2009), additive factors that will underestimate travel distances. We note, however, that our male M2, also with a 40 km 2 range size, moved 11 km/night (N = 15 nights of vHF tracking), while F3 on a 52 km 2 range, moved a mean of 21.7 km each night in October (Table 3.2), so ranges of this size do not alone account for short trajectories.…”

“…For six months, Melo et al followed a single pair and a young female that shared the same home range while the pair raised a litter . Subsequently, they observed care of young in situ (Melo et al, 2009).…”