earticle

영어

Dispersal of offspring is one of the important behavioral elements for understanding the ecological background of the species, especially for their survival and adaptation to the environment. The National Parks Service, Republic of Korea has been working on a special restoration project to prevent extinction of native Asiatic black bear (Ursus thibetanus) since 2004. Now, there are forty-seven individuals inhabit the Jirisan National Park, South Korea. This study was carried out to investigate the dispersal patterns of one bear family from 2009 to 2012. The home range sizes were calculated by 50%, 95% MCP(minimum convex polygon) and 50%, 95% FK(fixed kernel) methods. Overall home range of an adult male was larger than that of adult female. During the mating season in 2009, the overlap proportion of home ranges was estimated as 80.3%, 58.3% in summer and 57.69%, 88.76% in autumn between adult female and adult male, respectively. A female cub was born in this family in 2010. During first two years after birth of this cub, its home range was mostly overlapped with that of her mother but not that of her father. We found that the overall home range pattern showed gradually decreasing pattern between the mother and her cub since 2011 autumn from the results of continuous observation for these family members. However, the father and his cub had not significant overlapped home range patterns from 2011. The results of this study suggested that females may contribute mostly to care of offspring in U. thibetanus, and it take over three years for caring time by their mothers until sexual maturation of cubs. To understand complicate process of dispersal mechanism, it is necessary to investigate further researches such as spatial or regional dispersal patterns and correlation with other species and environmental conditions in future.