Spatial persistence of rural and urban Eurasian red squirrels in Japan

Abstract Urbanization has dramatically increased over the past few decades. Although urbanization can negatively impact wildlife, several species have succeeded in living in urban environments. To predict their population dynamics and to design their conservation or management strategies in urban environments, understanding life-history parameters, such as the survival rates of urban wildlife, is important. Here, we estimated the spatial persistence of rural and urban Eurasian red squirrels Sciurus vulgaris in Hokkaido, Japan. Our estimation using capture-mark-resight methods and hidden Markov models suggested that spatial persistence did not differ between urban and rural areas or between males and females. However, it largely varied among the study sites both in urban and rural areas, indicating the influence of differences in microhabitats. Considering squirrels usually settle in the same habitat after natal dispersal, our results indicate that environmental heterogeneity is a major determinant of their survival rates. Our study indicates the necessity of considering these region- and species-specific differences in life history parameters to conduct substantial conservation and management of urban wildlife.