Determining the diet and habitat characteristics of grey wolves (Canis lupus) in Northwestern Anatolia

Determination of wild animals' diet is a basic essential study for understanding their ecology, prey-predator relations and human-wildlife conflicts. The information about the diet and habitat preferences of Canid-species in Turkey is very limited and inadequate. This study was conducted to determine the diet and habitat characteristics of wolves in Northwestern Anatolia. In the diet study, collected feaces (N=76) from the field were washed and remains were compared to reference samples by using a microscope to identify the species in the diet. The point-frame method was used to determine the proportion of prey types in the remains of feaces; volumetric percentages, frequency of occurrences, total volume percentages and total biomass were calculated. Habitat preferences in a total of 7500 km2 were studied by comparing 48 wolf-present points and 48 randomly selected points representing available habitat features. ArcGIS program was used to draw 2500 m buffer around each points. All the vegetation classes in the region were reduced to five habitat classes, and the selection rate (w) was calculated whether wolves prefer the habitat feature or not. T-test (p <0.05) was used to determine statistical differences for the distance, slope, elevation, distance to the road and settlement for both data sets. As a result of the diet study, 96.21% meat, 3.62% vegetable food and 0.17% trash were detected in the wolf diet. A total of 16 different food categories were found. The wild boar (Sus scrofa) in terms of volume (56.14%) and frequency of occurrences (81.58%) was the major prey in the diet. This was followed by the roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) and the red deer (Cervus elaphus) with 19.74% and 8.5% the frequency of occurrences respectively. Preys of wolves included 91.41% wild animals, 6.27% domestic animals and 2.33% small mammals. In habitat preferences, wolves preferred coniferous forests with a higher selection rate (w=1.35). The wolves chose the northern aspects (w=2.10) and 60-70% slopes (w=1.6). Besides, about 70% of wolves were detected above 1100 m. It has been found that wolves are located at an average of 2207 m to settlements and 5539 m to the roads. In this study, it was found that wolves mostly feed on wild animals and cause limited damage to domestic animals in the Northwestern Turkey. Long term monitoring studies are needed to better understand the ecology of wolves in Turkey.