Human presence shifts the landscape of fear for a free-living mammal.

ABSTRACT: Humans may play a key role in providing small prey mammals spatial and temporal refuge from predators, but few studies have captured the heterogeneity of these effects across space and time. Global COVID-19 lockdown restrictions offered a unique opportunity to investigate how a sudden change in human presence in a semi-urban park impacted wildlife. Here, we quantify how changes in the spatial distributions of humans and natural predators influenced the landscape of fear for the California ground squirrel (Otospermophilus beecheyi) in a COVID-19 pandemic (2020) and non-COVID (2019) year. We used a structural equation modeling approach to explore the direct and indirect effects of human presence, predator presence, and habitat features on foraging that reflected fear responses (e.g., giving-

SUBMITTER: Ortiz-Jimenez CA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11725700 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature