Habitat selection as a hierarchy: the spatial scales of winter foraging by muskoxen

We studied the winter resource selection of muskoxen Ovibos moschatus in the High Arctic using a nested hierarchy of spatial scales : 1) population range, 2) travel routes, 3) feeding sites (i.e. clusters of feeding craters), 4) feeding craters, and 5) diet (i.e. plant species). We found that, generally, patterns of selection remained consistent across all levels. At successively smaller scales, muskoxen selected for higher graminoid abundance and particularly for thinner, softer snow cover, although we did not reject the hypothesis of random travel route selection. Muskoxen uncovered forages from beneath the snow cover, by cratering, near the floristic and nival extremes of availability. Selection was consistently biased toward use of water sedge, Carex aquatilis. As scale changed, however, muskoxen showed reversals of preference for some other forage species. Diet was dominated by C. aquatilis and cotton sedge, Eriophorum angustifolium, species characteristic of lowland meadows. During spring melt, muskoxen moved to snow-free uplands to feed. Dietary quality, as revealed by fecal nitrogen, increased at this time. The consistency of the results across scales implied that these local levels of habitat selection occurred within one scaling domain.

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