Seasonal scatology of wolves along the Dempster Highway, northwestern Canada-an introduction of pollen analysis for dating old scats

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This study aims to renovate the method of studying seasonal variation in wolf diet by introducing simultaneous analysis of undigested residua and pollen grains in wolf scats collected regardless of their freshness over a short period of time, in which pollen grains help to identify the season the diet was taken. The present study was conducted over a range of 500 km along the Dempster Highway extending north from Dawson, Yukon Territory to Inuvik, the Northwest Territories, Canada. We collected a total of 24 wolf scats along side roads and rivers, in which as many as 14 million pollen grains/scat were found on an average. The analysis revealed that the wolves relied exclusively on the caribou during winter when scats are free of pollen grains, but increase their dependence on the beaver and other mammals up to over 50% in term of residuum occurrence in spring and summer when scats are respectively loaded primarily with arboreal and herbaceous pollen grains. This result was consistent with the local fauna of prey animals, the migration pattern of the caribou for breeding and wintering, availability of the beaver and other rodents as dictated by ice/snow cover, and breeding and cub rearing pattern of the wolves themselves. Thus it was concluded that the pollen analysis serves as a powerful and effective tool for identifying the seasonality of old scats, and therefore saves a great deal of time and effort to be devoted to finding fresh scats.
国立極地研究所の論文
2004-02-01

Seasonal scatology of wolves along the Dempster Highway, northwestern Canada-an introduction of pollen analysis for dating old scats

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