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Scrutinizing GPS data from 1,200 animals from 18 species of the cat family (felids) and 16 species of the dog family (canids), scientists discovered surprising differences between the two groups regarding their navigation styles in the wild. Wolves and foxes use travel routeways more often than bobcats and lions. The difference becomes even more pronounced when comparing species from the two groups that live in the same area like coyotes and cougars. The study, challenging longstanding assumptions about animal movement, was led by scientists from the University of Maryland (USA) and the Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS) at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf in Germany.
The results of the largest comparative study of carnivore movement ecology ever conducted are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2401042122).
The next time you watch your dog visit the same places around your yard or notice that your cat seems to explore a new area every time it ventures outside, consider this: you might be witnessing an ancient evolutionary strategy in action. “We found that, despite frequent similarities in size, habitat selection, and choice of prey type, wild canid and wild felid species move through their home ranges in fundamentally different ways”, said senior author Dr. Justin M. Calabrese, head of the Earth System Science research group at CASUS and Adjunct Professor at University of Maryland. “The canids rely much more heavily on regularly used travel routes, called routeways, while the felids tend to move more irregularly through the landscape resulting in significantly fewer routeways identified.”
“We suspect that this split reflects deep evolutionary differences in how these species navigate and find their way around,” explained lead author Dr. William F. Fagan who is a Distinguished University Professor of Biology at University of Maryland. “Canids possess superior olfactory abilities compared to felids, potentially helping them establish and remember preferred travel routes.”
“Given the inherent heterogeneity in such a large, global dataset, the magnitude and consistency of these differences is striking,” says Calabrese. “However, we were careful to check that the lineage-specific differences persisted even after for controlling for many potentially confounding factors.” Intriguingly, the differences between canids and felids actually became stronger when the researchers restricted their analyses to those landscapes where both canids and felids could be studied together, removing the influence that different landscape types could have on movement patterns. For example, looking at coyotes and cougars living in the Eastern Rocky Mountains, the data revealed that coyotes had both more, and more frequently travelled, routeways compared to cougars.
Implications for mathematical modelers, wildlife conservationists and evolutionary biologists
The findings challenge scientists’ traditional understanding of the movement ecology of mammalian predators. Historically, researchers assumed that predators, regardless of taxonomic group, moved randomly throughout their territories, a widespread assumption that was long ago baked into standard mathematical models. However, the new findings show that carnivores from the dog family tend to create “highway” systems that they use to move through portions of their home ranges.
The researchers believe that their results have implications both for the theory of animal movement and for improving wildlife conservation practices. In the former case, these findings inform how models of encounter processes among moving animals—which are crucial for understanding ecological interactions like predation and disease transmission—need to be modified to better accord with reality. Improving encounter models is a key focus of the ecological research conducted at CASUS. In the latter case, being able to understand and anticipate animal movement patterns, which is an easier task for species that move more regularly, is crucial for predicting human-wildlife encounters, organizing conservation areas, and protecting endangered species from threats such as poachers.
Grand effort pays off
“This research was a massive undertaking, beginning as a multitude of email exchanges during the COVID pandemic,” Fagan remembers. With 177 collaborators from 150 research institutions around the world, the project developed into the largest comparative study of carnivore movement ecology ever conducted. The dataset collected includes GPS collar data detailing the movements of 1,239 individual carnivores representing 34 species across six continents over the past decade. “The project demonstrated how modern GPS technology and sophisticated analysis methods developed by our research group can reveal fascinating hidden aspects of animal behavior that were impossible to study just a short time ago,” Fagan added.
Prof. Dr. Justin Calabrese | Research Team Leader
Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS) at HZDR
email: j.calabrese@hzdr.de
https://www.casus.science/?page_id=4289
William F. Fagan et al.: Wild canids and felids differ in their reliance on reused travel routeways, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2025 (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2401042122)
https://bit.ly/felidsandcanids press release at the institute including links to cooperation partners and to other works of the research group (will be accessible on 29 September 9 pm CEST)
Movement data of the red fox (Vulpes vulpes), one of the most widely distributed members of the orde ...
Copyright: Ivan Rudoy / Unsplash
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