IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Delibes, M. | |
| Feeding ecology of the Spanish lynx in the Coto Donana | |
| 1980 Acta Theriologica (25): 309-324 | |
To study the food habits of the Spanish lynx were analysied 1537 droppings collected throughout two periods of one year in Do¤ana, S.W. Spain. A food test which was carried out on a captive lynx allowed us to relate the number of occurrences of each kind of prey in the samples with the actual numbers of individual preys and the biomass devoured. The main prey is the rabbit which amounts to 79% of the prey captured and 85% of the biomass consumed. The next in the importance are the ducks (9% and 7% resepectively) and the ungulates (3% and 5%). Seasonal variations in the diet are not very pronounced. The importance of rabbits is at its maximum between July and October, that of the ducks between March and June and that of the cervids between November and February. The prey is selected for the facility in which they may be caught rather than for their abundance. It is estimated that an individual lynx consumes about 74gr of food per kilo of body weight daily. The impact of the predation on the prey populations is difficult to evaluate, but it seems to be very important on the fallow deer population, relatively important on these of rabbits and red deer and very slight on that of ducks. Predation on ungulates in the study area may be a kind of starvation related mortaliy. |
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