The maned wolf, the largest canid in South America, was originally distributed in areas with open natural vegetation in the Cerrado biome, Chaco and Pampas regions. The dynamics of its distribution are, however, in flux, with populations declining at the southern limit of its distribution, and areas of apparent range expansion in Brazil. Although the maned wolf’s overall distribution is well documented, little is known about its smallest-scale landscape use. Here we used a novel approach, characterising “favourable territories” for maned wolves using presence data and information on daily movement capacity. In this way, we used favourability distribution models to relate local landscape use by maned wolves to environmental drivers in the Serra da Mantiqueira, part of the core of the species distribution. Our results showed that the favourablity of territories for maned wolf activity increases with altitude, and with the proportion of coverage of upper montane vegetation refuges and of open habitats such as agricultural fields. Our results also show that the configuration of the environment with respect to topography is an important driver of the favourability of the landscape for maned wolf activity. Finally, we identified some human-wildlife conflicts in the surroundings of the protected area which could increase with increasing maned wolf populations. In conclusion, our results support the importance of maintaining the integrity of high-altitude open areas in the conservation of maned wolf habitat and provide useful data for maned wolf management at the core of its global current distribution. We highlight that this is the first study to use fuzzy logic tools at the local scale to analyze the favourability of territories for maned wolf activity in a highly favourable region along an elevational gradient.

中文翻译：

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揭开巴西东南部大西洋森林沿海拔梯度鬃狼活动的驱动因素

鬃狼是南美洲最大的犬科动物，最初分布在塞拉多生物群落、查科和潘帕斯地区的自然植被开阔的地区。然而，其分布的动态是不断变化的，其分布的南端种群数量下降，而巴西的分布范围明显扩大。尽管鬃狼的整体分布有据可查，但对其最小规模的景观用途知之甚少。在这里，我们使用了一种新颖的方法，使用存在数据和有关日常活动能力的信息来表征鬃狼的“有利领土”。通过这种方式，我们使用有利分布模型将鬃狼对当地景观的利用与 Serra da Mantiqueira 的环境驱动因素联系起来，这是物种分布的核心部分。我们的研究结果表明，鬃狼活动的有利地区随着海拔的升高，以及上山地植被保护区和农田等开放栖息地的覆盖比例而增加。我们的结果还表明，相对于地形的环境配置是景观对鬃狼活动有利的重要驱动因素。最后，我们确定了保护区周围的一些人类与野生动物冲突，这些冲突可能会随着鬃狼数量的增加而增加。总之，我们的结果支持保持高海拔开放区域完整性对鬃狼栖息地保护的重要性，并为鬃狼全球当前分布的核心管理提供有用的数据。