Potrava sov v oblasti Tatier: 65-ročná história výskumu

Abstract

The first paper on the diet of owls from the territory of Slovakia was published by Schaefer in 1933, who collected pellets of barn owl (Tyto alba) in the church in Ľubica village. Later on the sampled osteological material form the eagle-owl´s nests on the Kotka Mt. (Kusý vrch Mt.) and near Bušovce village (Schaefer 1938). Large osteological samples taken at the entrances of the cave in Muraň Mt. and the upper cave in Nový Mt., were analyzed with considerable deley in 1970s (Schaefer 1974, 1975a). A part of his samples of pleistocene faune from the two caves in Nový Mt., still not analyzed, is kept in Germany. Based on the results of Schaefer (1938, 1972) and my sample of the eagle-owl´s diet from Monkova dolina valley taken in 1997, I portray the changes in prey composition in the surrordings of the Tatra Mts. between 3 periods separeted by 30 year intervals (Table 1). Marked differences from the mean (+,-) are related to those prey species whose percentages have changed considerably. This was the case only in subdominant species. When comparing percentages of diagnostic species in the samles of eagle-owl´s diet from Ždiar and Zuberec villages with those in the samples of Schaefer from Muráň Mt. (Table 2), marked differences arise. Samples Muráň 1 and Muráň 2 can be separated only by sample sizes and substantial part of both samples came from prey remnants of tawny owl in middle holocene. Lower part of Table 2 contains species with low abudances from the broader knowledge of the evolution of fauna in the Tatra Mts.