Temporal clustering of prey in wildlife passages provides no evidence of a prey‑trap

Background/Question/Methods

Wildlife passages are structures built across roads to facilitate wildlife movement and prevent wildlifecollisions with vehicles. The efficacy of these structures could be reduced if they funnel prey intoconfined spaces at predictable locations that are exploited by predators. We tested the so-called preytraphypothesis using remote cameras in 17 wildlife passages in Quebec, Canada from 2012 to 2015 bymeasuring the temporal occurrence of nine small and medium-sized mammal taxa (< 30 kg) that weclassified as predators and prey. We predicted that the occurrence of a prey-trap would be evidencedby greater frequencies and shorter latencies of sequences in which predators followed prey, relative toprey–prey sequences.

Results/Conclusions

Our results did not support the prey-trap hypothesis; observed prey–predatorsequences showed no difference or were less frequent than expected, even when prey were unusuallyabundant or rare or at sites with higher proportions of predators. Prey–predator latencies were also1.7 times longer than prey–prey sequences. These results reveal temporal clustering of prey that maydilute predation risk inside wildlife passages. We encourage continued use of wildlife passages asmitigation tools.