Ants in brown bear diet, and discovery of a new ant species for Estonia from brown bear scats

Hystrix, the Italian Journal of Mammalogy

article

Marju Keis¹  Egle Tammeleht¹  Harri Valdmann¹  Urmas Saarma¹ 

[1] Department of Zoology, Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu

关键词: diet;    Ursus arctos;    selective foraging;    ants;    brown bear;    myrmecophagy;   

DOI  :  10.4404/hystrix-00168-2019

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Associazione Teriologica Italiana

【 摘 要 】

For omnivorous brown bears, ants can seasonally constitute an important category of food withhigh nutritional value. A former dietary study conducted in Estonia revealed that the energy gainedfrom animal and plant food was roughly equal, whereas the contribution of ants was almost 15%.Here, using the same dataset, we analyzed ant consumption by brown bears in Estonia at a greatertaxonomic resolution and evaluated the preferences of brown bears towards different ant speciesby measuring the availability (biomass and mound density) of ants in the study area. Among the18 species and five groups of ants in bear scats, members of the genera Lasius and Formica werethe most abundantly consumed ant groups, considering both the volume and frequency of occurrence. Among the species we detected, Lasius niger and Formica polyctena dominated. However,these were not the favorite ant taxa for bears, that highly preferred Camponotus ants and avoidedMyrmica ants. In addition, a new species (Camponotus fallax) for Estonian ant fauna was discovered, providing an example of how studies on mammal food habits can reveal elusive insect speciesthat have remained undiscovered with traditional survey methods. The general pattern of the brownbear myrmecophagy in Europe is examined to place our results into a broader context.

【 授权许可】

CC BY-NC