Factors affecting spatiotemporal behaviour in the European brown hare Lepus europaeus: a meta-analysis

The European brown hare Lepus europaeus is the most widely distributed hare species of the world, being naturally present throughout Eurasia and introduced as a game species in most continents. Despite the importance of this lagomorph for both management and conservation, a quantitative summary of its spatiotemporal behaviour is still lacking. Taking advantage of 51 selected studies conducted throughout the native range of the hare and spanning the last 40 years, we used meta-analytic approaches in order to: 1) investigate home range size in relation to ecological factors; 2) test preference across major habitat types; and 3) provide a quantitative synthesis of hare activity patterns. Temporally adjusted home range size of hare populations decreased with increasing cropland cover (cereal and non-cereal crops), suggesting that home range size gets smaller with increasing food availability, and predicting that hare populations living in absence of crops would double their mean home range size compared to those inhabiting areas covered entirely by cropland. Hare populations where more males were sampled showed larger home ranges, in line with the polygynous mating system of this species. Hares preferred cropland and grassland over other habitats for foraging, thus selecting the two habitats characterised by the majority of trophic resources for this species. Yet, habitat types were used proportionally to their availability overall, except for the general avoidance of human settlements. Hares were mainly nocturnal, with the lowest activity during daytime, when activity was about one third of that at night, and showed moonlight avoidance, probably to limit encounters with nocturnal predators. Our work emphasises the importance of open habitats and especially cropland for this lagomorph, but also suggests some plasticity in the use of space and time by hares. Such plasticity may help this mammal to cope with future environmental changes, providing that landscape heterogeneity is maintained.