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Research and management programs of wild animal populations often require intensive field actions, which make direct interventions on animals such as capture, immobilization and manipulation, frequently necessary. Such events, however, could induce a stress response causing physiological and behavioural alterations in the individuals. Knowing the impact of these practices in the post-release phase is of crucial importance when studying the spatial behaviour of wild species. Our study aimed to investigate the potential effect of narcosis and application of GPS collars on 17 red deer Cervus elaphus hinds living in a mountainous area in northern Apennine, Italy. We conducted the analysis at a temporal scale of 45 days after release, in order to assess the response of animals in terms of changes in movement rates, distance from the barycentre of their positions and distance from the capture sites. We then compared habitat selection between the period of disturbance and the following days. This work represents the first study of the behavioural responses of wild red deer to capture and handling procedures. We showed that these operations significantly affect the spatial behaviour of hinds by inducing a short-term increase in movement rates and by keeping the animals away from the centre of their activity, for a period no longer than 10 days. The habitat selection analysis remarked a tendency to escape from human disturbance, by avoiding hunting sites and anthropized locations in favour of forest cover. Red deer hinds thus, seem to cope with stressful events and disturbance by adopting a flight behaviour, which includes moving away from the capture area and seeking refuges. The differences highlighted between the 'stressful' period and the following one, showed that such modifications persist for a limited time frame and suggested that this capture method is unlikely to lead to permanent alterations of behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

GPS collars for wildlife provide a large amount of spatio-temporal location data and are frequently equipped with sensors that record the animal-level environmental temperature at a schedulable sampling frequency. The simultaneous collection of environmental temperature and animal location may contribute not only to deepen the understanding of animal behavior in different climatic conditions, but also to increase the knowledge of climate features in inaccessible areas. The measurement of environmental temperature provided by the sensors, however, can be biased by several factors (e.g., surface temperature of the animal, direct solar radiation, precipitation), so in-depth studies are required to verify the correlation. The aim of this study was to identify an equation for correcting the collar-recorded temperature data, allowing to improve and refine the results obtained by the analysis of spatial data and to highlight the environmental factors having the greatest impact on the accuracy of the measures. Temperature data from GPS collars were obtained within a research on spatial behavior on 11 hinds while spatialized temperature data were obtained from LAMMA-IBIMET dataset. These data showed high correlation and an identical trend, although the GPS collar temperature data was always higher. This model could represent a tool to obtain an accurate measurement of temperatures in complex geographical areas with wild animals but low density of weather stations. The availability of corrected temperature data, recorded simultaneously with the animal location, could be useful for a more accurate comprehension of animal behavior in free-ranging conditions, both in case of forthcoming studies and to valorize existing datasets.