Analysis of dietary habits of brown bear and lynx in Yenice and Sarıkamış regions, Turkey

Abstract

In this study, the dietary habits of brown bears (Ursus arctos arctos) living in Yenice and Sarıkamış regions and dietary habits of lynx (Lynx lynx dinniki) living in Sarıkamış were investigated by scat analysis, and using the DNA metabarcoding approach. Universal primers were used for plant, invertebrate and vertebrate detection. Diet compositions of bears in Yenice and Sarıkamış regions were analyzed and compared to determine the effect of garbage feeding, and diet compositions for the bear were consistent with literature. Shannon, Levin’s, and Pianka indexes were used for comparison of different locations of the collected samples. The results did not confirm the hypothesis of low diet diversity and low niche width for garbage feeding. Vertebrate component of lynx diet was not identified, potentially due to biases introduced by the methods used. However, the lack of detection of vertebrates could be due to human pressure on habitats and decreased prey availability for lynx.