We are deploying GPS collars on brown bears and moose and following them during spring in Sweden as part of a multispecies interaction study. The primary goal is to evaluate bear-moose kill rates. We are also equipping a portion of moose and bear GPS collars with proximity sensors, with the secondary goal of exploring their capacity to opportunistically collect fine-scale movement data during direct interactions between brown bears and moose. Proximity sensors offer the possibility to switch GPS collars to collect fine-scale GPS data during specific events and then switch back to coarser fix rates once the event is over, saving battery life, extending collar life, and delaying invasive, time-intensive, and costly recapture events
On 6 June, 2023, the collars on moose F4692 (adult female with 2 newborn calves) and bear W2306 (adult male) triggered on each other and collected fine-scale GPS data. On 8 June, we visited the site and found a female neonate moose carcass with clear indications of bear bite marks on the head and neck, confirming the predation event.
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first instance of a predation event between two free-ranging wild predators and prey species recorded by GPS proximity collars. We suggest this technology can be used to explore a wide range of individual and multispecies interactions between large mammals in free-living systems.
The study was published as a Nature Note in Ecology and Evolution in December, 2023.
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