Abstract
The domestic cat has been introduced on several sub-Antarctic islands such as the Kerguelen archipelago (48°28′–50°S, 68°28′–70°35E), causing a worrying impact on the viability of some seabird populations. A better understanding of the biology of this introduced predator is needed to help design appropriate management actions. To investigate the effectiveness of a GPS study on feral cats living on the Kerguelen main island and to gain preliminary results on cat space use and fine-scale movement patterns, we fitted GPS collars on three young adult males and recorded cat location at a high frequency (every 5 min) for 2–3 weeks, during the austral summer. Home-range sizes varied from 0.30 to 0.73 km², with large overlaps in space but not in time. Cats were active during the warmest hours of the day, with a peak of activity around 2:00 p.m. This preliminary result suggests that trapping for management of the population should therefore yield the highest number of captures in the afternoon and before sunrise, when cats are more active. Our pilot study demonstrated the potential of using GPS to track feral cats in sub-Antarctic islands, opening up opportunities to get deep insights in the spatial ecology of these introduced predators.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Léo Martin and Guillaume Chagneau for excellent field assistance in the data collection. This work was supported by the French Polar Institute (IPEV, programme no. 279) and the CNRS, ZA Programme “Environnement, Vie et Société’’. We acknowledge support from the Embassy of France in South Africa and the Claude Leon Foundation. We thank four anonymous referees for their helpful comments on the manuscript.
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Martin, J., Rey, B., Pons, JB. et al. Movements and space use of feral cats in Kerguelen archipelago: a pilot study with GPS data. Polar Biol 36, 1531–1536 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-013-1365-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-013-1365-x