Occurrence patterns of crop-foraging sika deer distribution in an agriculture-forest landscape revealed by nitrogen stable isotopes
Ayaka Hata, Rumiko Nakashita, Keita Fukasawa, Masato Minami, Yuko Fukue, Naoko Higuchi, Hikaru Uno, Yasuhiro Nakajima, Midori Saeki, Chinatsu Kozakai & Mayura Takada
Conflicts arising from the consumption of anthropogenic foods by wildlife are increasing worldwide. Conventional tools for evaluating the spatial distribution pattern of large terrestrial mammals that consume anthropogenic foods have various limitations, despite their importance in management to mitigate conflicts. In this study, we examined the spatial distribution pattern of crop-foraging sika deer by performing nitrogen stable isotope analyses of bone collagen. We evaluated whether crop-foraging deer lived closer to agricultural crop fields during the...