Ábrahám Levente (szerk.): Válogatott tanulmányok V. - Natura Somogyiensis 17. (Kaposvár, 2010)
LANSZKI, J., SÁRDI, B., & L. SZÉLES, G.: Egy kézből nevelt nyest (Martes foina) táplálék-összetétele az elengedést és önállóvá válást követően egy hazai faluban
Natura Somogyiensis 17 309-314 Kaposvár, 2010 Diet composition of a hand-reared stone marten (Maries foina ) after its release and independence in a Hungarian village JÓZSEF LANSZKI, BERTALAN SÁRDI & GABRIELLA L. SZÉLES Department of Nature Conservation, University of Kaposvár, H-7401 Kaposvár, RO. Box 16, Hungary, e-mail: lanszki@ke.hu LANSZKJ, .J, SÁRDI , B., L. SZÉLES, G.: Diet composition of a hand-reared stone marten (Martes foina) after its release and independence in a Hungarian village. Abstract: Diet composition and feeding habits of a hand-reared stone marten after release in a village was examined and compared to other martens which had lived earlier in or around the same village (Fonó, Somogy county, Hungary). The food habits were investigated indirectly by analysis of stone marten scats (n = 34 individual samples) using standard wet procedure. Studies in the autumn-winter period showed that the trophic niche of the hand-reared stone marten was relatively narrow. Plants (mainly grapes, apple and blackthorn) formed the dominant component of the diet and small mammals (mainly brown rat, house mouse and wood mice species) were the primary prey type, as in the other local studies. Contrary to other stone martens from Somogy county, predation upon birds was low (%B: 2.4%), and no domestic animal remains were found in the scat samples. The hand-reared marten preyed on mainly small sized and terrestrial prey species, and used garbage as a food source. Keywords: food habits, predation, prey size, trophic niche Introduction The stone marten ( Martes foina Erxleben, 1777) is Palaearctic, being widely distributed in the European broad-leaved forest zone and Asian steppe zone (BROEKHUIZEN 1999), and common in Hungary ( TÓTH et al. 2007). The species is a habitat opportunist, and can be found from natural or nearly-natural areas to different human settlements. The success of release of orphaned and rescued young stone martens, after handrearing, is doubtful. Tracking the animal during the period of becoming independent is difficult if there is no radio-tracking (HERRMANN 1994, GENOVESI et al. 1996) available. The release of the animal may be problematic for instance, 1) ifit does not know threat factors adequately (dogs, cats, other stone martens, SEILER et al. 1994, TÓTH et al. 2007), 2) if it is tame and used to human contact as in this case it is not afraid of or avoid humans and may in fact seek food from them, 3) it may lack the vital knowledge of hunting techniques and 4) it may cause damage due to its false strong relationship with the human environment ( LANSZKINÉ and LANSZKI 2005). The young female stone marten in this case study arrived with us in April 2004. During its rehabilitation, it was allowed to spend some hours freely in the yard and to play with our puli type dogs which were taking care of some orphaned carnivores. In the following
