Fig 1.
Distribution of European bison (Bison bonasus) and moose (Alces alces) populations used in the study.
Projection of the map is ETRS89 / ETRS-LAEA.
Fig 2.
Relationship between compositions of carbon δ13Ccor and nitrogen δ15N isotopes in bone collagen of (a) European bison and (b) moose from different populations.
Table 1.
Multiple regression model selection (based on the AICc criteria) to investigate the effect of different factors (see Materials and methods) on carbon (δ13Ccor) and nitrogen (δ15N) stable isotope compositions in bone collagen of European bison and moose from different European populations.
Table 2.
Parameter estimates for the best multiple regression models (Table 1), describing the effects of different factors on the carbon (δ13Ccor) and nitrogen (δ15N) stable isotope compositions in bone collagen of European bison (N = 79) and moose (N = 37) from European different populations.
Fig 3.
Influence of forest cover on carbon isotope compositions δ13Ccor in populations of (a) European bison and (b) moose.
Fig 4.
Influence of (a) forest cover, (b) presence of crop damage and (c) annual temperature on nitrogen δ15N isotope compositions in European bison based on estimates from multiple regression model.
Table 3.
One-way ANOVA for δ13Ccor and δ15N for six European bison Bison bonasus and four moose Alces alces populations.
Table 4.
Pairwise divergence between Polish and Lithuanian populations of Bison bonasus (N = 73) based on δ13Ccor and δ15N.
Fig 5.
Differences in (a) δ13Ccor and (b) δ15N between early Holocene and modern populations of European bison and (c) (d) moose.
One asterisk—p = 0.05–0.01, two asterisks—p = 0.009–0.001, three asterisks—p < 0.001; NS- not significant differences, Mann-Whitney U-test for δ13Ccor and Student’s t-test for δ15N. Data on carbon and nitrogen stable isotope compositions on early Holocene bison and moose was taken from the literature [16, 47].