ArticleDie Naturwissenschaften2012
The plant physical features selected by wildcats as signal posts: an economic approach to fecal marking.
Article in Die Naturwissenschaften, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Experimental Assessment of the Effects of Substrate Choice on the Duration of Chemical Signals in Fecal Scent-Marks of Free-Ranging Iberian Wolves.Journal of experimental zoology. Part A, Ecological and integrative physiology · 2026Article
- Exposure to Feline Viruses in European Wildcats (Viruses · 2026Article
- Ritualised Dung Kicking by White Rhino Males Amplifies Olfactory Signals but Reduces Odour Duration.Journal of chemical ecology · 2018Article
- The concentration of fear: mice's behavioural and physiological stress responses to different degrees of predation risk.Die Naturwissenschaften · 2018Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
The chemical signals of solitary and territorial felid species are essential for their intraspecific communication. We studied the selection of plant substrates during the fecal marking behavior of the European wildcat Felis silvestris from September 2008 to June 2009 in a protected area in Northwest Spain. The aim of the study was to examine the selection of plants as signal posts with respect to their physical characteristics. We hypothesized that wildcats deposit their fecal marks on plants with physical characteristics (e.g., size, species, and visual conspicuousness) that enhance the olfactory and visual effectiveness of the signal. Our results indicate that diameter, plant group, visual conspicuousness, and interaction between the diameter and plant group influence the decision of wildcats to deposit their fecal marks on plants. The wildcats chose plants with greater diameters and greater visual conspicuousness as scent-marking posts. Moreover, the wildcats chose woody and herbaceous plants, and certain plant species were marked more frequently than expected at random. Indeed, our results indicate that the fecal marks were not randomly distributed on the plants: the wildcats chose to place their marks on plants with certain physical characteristics that maximized the detectability of the signal by intruders and potential mates, thus facilitating the spatial distribution of the species.
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