Jackal and Hide - Monitoring of golden jackals (Canis aureus) with two different methods

Summary Golden jackal (Canis aureus) monitoring in central Europe is getting more important with the appearance of jackals in new, previously unestablished areas. Compared to research of other mammals, the genetic monitoring of golden jackals entails challenges. One of them, the possible incorrect discrimination of jackal scats from other related species - specifically the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) - could even cause false results in diet analyses and population monitoring (calculating of relative abundance) or high costs in DNA-analyses. We assume, that human searchers are prone to error possibilities in identifying jackal scats by visual features. Therefore, we will use trained dogs to locate and identify golden jackal scats in Austrian and Hungarian shrublands. Furthermore, as a second method, that is already more established as the tracking dog method, we will continue to acoustically monitor specifically selected areas in the border region of Austria-Hungary.