Abstract

Wild populations of Arabian gazelles (Gazella arabica) were once common on the Arabian Peninsula, but today disappeared from large parts of their former range. In Israel only a small population of currently 30 individuals survived, although it was—and still is—well protected from illegal hunting and habitat destruction. In our study we aimed to identify the factors influencing the population growth of G. arabica in Israel over the last two decades (1995–2017). We tested the impact of five environmental variables including annual mean maximum temperature, rainfall, the availability of two major food plants, competition with sympatric dorcas gazelle (G. dorcas) and predation (mainly by wolves) on two dependent variables relating to population viability (population size, percentage fawn survival) using a retrospective time series analysis. After testing for autocorrelations, two generalized least squares (GLS) models with autocorrelations at 3 and 6 years [GLS-AR(3, 6)] were identified as the best models to explain environmental effects on populations size. Wolf encounter rate had a significant negative effect on G. arabica population size, while G. dorcas population size had a significant positive effect, suggesting that wolf predation shapes the population size of both gazelle species. For percentage fawn survival, model residuals did not reveal any significant autocorrelation and the best fit GLS-AR(0) model retained only wolf encounter rate and mean annual maximal temperature as significant predictors. This result suggests a strong impact of wolf predation and increasing temperatures on the fawn survival of Arabian gazelles. Changed rainfall patterns, food availability and competition between gazelle species had no impact on fawn survival.

中文翻译：

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驱使以色列的阿拉伯瞪羚灭绝的因素：未开发种群的人口规模和少年生存的时间序列分析

摘要

阿拉伯瞪羚（Gazella arabica）的野生种群曾经在阿拉伯半岛上很常见，但是今天已经从它们以前的大部分地区消失了。在以色列，只有一小部分目前的30个人幸存下来，尽管它一直受到保护，并且仍然受到非法狩猎和栖息地破坏的保护。在我们的研究中，我们旨在确定影响以色列近二十年来（1995-2017年）阿拉伯阿拉伯奶茶人口增长的因素。我们测试了五个环境变量的影响，包括年平均最高温度，降雨量，两个主要粮食工厂的可用性，与同胞dorcas gazelle（G. dorcas）的竞争。）和使用回顾性时间序列分析对与种群生存能力有关的两个因变量（种群大小，小鹿存活率）进行捕食（主要是狼）。在对自相关进行测试之后，两个具有3年和6年自相关的广义最小二乘（GLS）模型[GLS-AR（3，6）]被确定为解释环境对人口规模影响的最佳模型。狼的遭遇率对阿拉比卡牛的种群规模具有显着的负面影响，而杜卡斯牛种群规模具有显着的积极影响，表明狼的捕食影响了这两个瞪羚物种的种群规模。对于小鹿存活率，模型残差没有显示任何显着的自相关，而最适合的GLS-AR（0）模型仅保留狼的遭遇率和年平均最高气温作为重要的预测因子。这一结果表明，狼捕食和温度升高对阿拉伯瞪羚的小鹿存活有很大影响。降雨模式的变化，食物的供应以及瞪羚物种之间的竞争对小鹿的生存没有影响。