Space and habitat use by wild Bactrian camels in the Transaltai Gobi of southern Mongolia

Abstract

HighlightsWild Bactrian camels persist in some of the most remote desert locations in northern China and southern Mongolia.Individual annual home ranges in the Mongolian Gobi were > 12,000 km2 and average straight line distances 3.0-6.4 km/day.Wild camels preferred intermediate productivity values and landscape parameters, but an avoided steep slopes.Wild camels still roam the entire Great Gobi A Protected Area, are highly mobile, and very sensitive to human disturbance.More data from additional wild camels as a foundation for evidence driven conservation actions is urgently needed.

A Genome-Wide Association Study Identifies Quantitative Trait Loci Affecting Hematological Traits in Camelus bactrianus

“…Various strategies have been proposed to solve these GWAS-related problems [28,29], and we used three analyses to accurately determine the relationships among the analyzed genotypes. In the phylogenetic tree, the 366 genotypes are divided into seven groups, which is consistent with the number of breeds of the species in the study [7,30]. However, it is worth noting that a small number of Tarim Bactrian camel samples are mixed in with the Junggar Bactrian camel group, possibly because they all live in the Xinjiang region of China and hybridization events are inevitable.…”

Home Range Size and Resource Use of Breeding and Non-breeding White Storks Along a Land Use Gradient

“…To this end, we quantified home range sizes and resource selection in white storks (Ciconia ciconia) from GPS telemetry and analyzed these with respect to breeding status and for three different study areas along a land use gradient. Habitat selection was evaluated at multiple scales (McGarigal et al, 2016), and we assessed variation in habitat configuration both at the level of bird home range and within the home range by studying fine-scale resource use (Tanferna et al, 2013;Kaczensky et al, 2014). For the latter, we ensured that fine-scale movements are indicative of resource utilization and not confounded with other activities (Kie et al, 2010) by filtering the GPS data to feeding events using ACCderived behavioral classification (Nathan et al, 2012;Resheff et al, 2014;Rotics et al, 2016).…”

The Seasonal Distribution of Wild Camels (<i>Camelus ferus</i>) in Relation to Changes of the Environmental Conditions in Mongolia

“…MaxEnt produces two types of response of camel presence to environmental variables: 1) each variable's response curve averaged by other predictor variables and 2) each variable's response curve created using only the variable itself. Predictor variables included those previously reported by Kaczensky et al (2014); that is NDVI, proximity to water and slope. We then included four additional parameters, land surface temperature (LST), flow accumulation, soil type and a modified vegetation type.…”

“…Interpreting these estimates is difficult given the lack of rigorous sampling designs including a frequent bias toward searching mostly in areas where camels were thought to occur and extrapolating from this. This study were to use tracking data from the above mentioned seven collared wild camel [11] and also four collared captive wild camels after release them in to the Gobi A from Breeding centre with additional habitat predictor variables to provide a more detailed analysis of predictors of camel presence. In addition to repeating tests for associations to landscape productivity (based on NDVI values), proximity to water and slope we also tested an association between camel presence and land surface temperature, water flow accumulation, soil type and an alternative characterization of vegetation type.…”