# Feeding Habits of Sympatric Mustelids in an Agricultural Area of Hungary

> What do badgers and martens eat when they share the same Hungarian farmland? Four years of scats revealed that both lived mostly on common voles and plants, badgers on maize and martens on wild fruit, with their diets overlapping by two thirds. Food was plentiful enough that they had no need to divide it up.

Summary by Kersey Lawrence, Original Wisdom. Updated 9 November 2026. Page: https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2011-lanszki-heltai-feeding-habits-sympatric-mustelids/

## Citation and access

- **Authors:** József Lanszki and Miklós Heltai
- **Year published:** 2011
- **Journal or source:** Acta Zoologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae
- **Full citation:** Lanszki, J. and Heltai, M. 2011. Feeding habits of sympatric mustelids in an agricultural area of Hungary. Acta Zoologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 57(3): 291–304.
- **Access status:** Hosted (freely available elsewhere)
- **PDF:** https://www.originalwisdom.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/2011_Lanszki_and_Heltai_feeding-habits-of-sympatric-mustelids-in-an-agricultural-area.pdf

## Tags

- **Species:** Mammals > European badger; Mammals > Pine marten; Mammals > Stone marten
- **Region:** Europe > Hungary
- **Tracking:** Scat; Sign surveys; Tracking; Tracks and signs identification
- **Behaviour and ecology:** Behaviour; Carnivore coexistence; Feeding; Interspecific competition
- **Methods and technology:** Analysis of variance (ANOVA); Capture-mark-recapture; Pearson correlation
- **Data type:** New field data
- **Observer qualification:** Not reported
- **Discipline:** Behaviour and ecology; Wildlife tracking
- **Year published:** 2011

## Detailed keywords

- **Species:** Studied: Eurasian badger (Meles meles) and marten (Martes sp.), a combined group of stone marten (Martes foina) and pine marten (Martes martes), whose scats could not be told apart in the field. Food remains found: common vole (Microtus arvalis, over 90% of the Microtus remains in badger scats), other Microtus voles (field vole Microtus agrestis and European pine vole Microtus subterraneus are named as present in the area), bank vole (Myodes glareolus), Apodemus mice (yellow-necked mouse A. flavicollis, common field mouse A. sylvaticus and striped field mouse A. agrarius in the area), steppe mouse (Mus spicilegus), harvest mouse (Micromys minutus), other rodents, shrews (Sorex and Crocidura spp.), a mustelid, European brown hare (Lepus europaeus), wild boar (Sus scrofa) including a young one, roe deer, red deer and fallow deer, pheasant (Phasianus colchicus), sparrow (Passer spp.), nuthatch (Sitta europaea), starling (Sturnus vulgaris), other passerines and medium-sized birds, eggs, lizards, frogs, fish, domestic cat and dog carcasses, sheep wool and other domestic ungulate carcasses, beetles (mainly carabid beetles), honey bees with nest parts and bees’ wax, earthworms (Lumbricidae), other invertebrates, blackthorn (Prunus spinosa), pear (Pyrus spp.), rose-hips (Rosa canina), other fruits, maize (Zea mays), other seeds and grasses. In the study area but not studied: golden jackal and red fox.
- **Location and habitat:** Ormánság region, between Kétújfalu, Potony and Lakócsa, southwestern Hungary, Pannonian biogeographical region (45°56’N, 17°41’E; 103–123 m above sea level). A mosaic of farmland and small woodlands with four main habitat types: abandoned fields (fell from 56.1% to 14.4% of the area during the study), ploughland with cereals and soy (rose from 10.9% to 48.7%), mixed oak, elm and ash forest (22.9% to 29.5%), and shrubby areas and banks (10.2% to 7.4%). Scats were collected within an area of 650 ha.
- **Topics:** diet analysis from scats, food habits, sympatric carnivores, trophic niche breadth, trophic niche overlap, food resource partitioning, prey preference, prey size, prey habitat and zonation (terrestrial, arboreal, aquatic), seasonal and yearly diet change, small mammal availability, effects of a harsh winter (2002/2003), agricultural change (abandoned fields brought back under the plough), latrines, coexistence of carnivores.
- **Statistics or models:** Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA, GLM procedure, LSD post-hoc test); Pearson correlation; paired samples t-test; one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA, LSD post-hoc test); Levins’ trophic niche breadth (standardized); Renkonen index of niche overlap; Ivlev’s preference index; biomass estimates from dry remains with conversion factors. SPSS 10.0. Small mammal densities from capture-mark-recapture, reported in more detail in Lanszki and Heltai (2010). Inconsistency: the text gives 545 marten scats (a seasonal mean of 34 across 16 seasons), but the seasonal counts in Table 1 add up to 563 (161 + 158 + 110 + 134). The badger counts agree (166). The abstract gives mean small mammal biomass as 59.3% (badger) and 48.0% (marten); the small mammal rows in Table 1 add up to about 63% and 49%.
- **Data type:** New field data: scats collected monthly on a standard route from December 2000 to November 2004 (16 seasons); route 12.8 km in 2001, 21.3 km in 2002 and 22.7 km in 2003 and 2004. Small mammal surveys from autumn 2001.

## Synopsis

### 1. What they did

The Eurasian badger and two martens, the stone marten and the pine marten, live side by side in the farmland and small woods of Hungary. The badger is the largest of the three: heavily built, a digger that lives on the ground. The martens are slender, agile climbers. The authors asked what each eats through the seasons and years, and whether they share out their food to avoid competing.

For four years (December 2000 to November 2004), they collected scats every month along a standard route in a 650 ha patch of farmland and woodland in the Ormánság region of southwestern Hungary. Badger scats came from latrines along the route nearest two badger setts. Stone marten and pine marten scats could not be told apart by size, shape, smell or tracks, so they were grouped together as “marten”.

In the laboratory, they washed 166 badger scats and 545 marten scats through a fine sieve and identified hair, teeth, feathers, insect parts, earthworm bristles and seeds under the microscope, using keys and their own reference collections. They weighed the remains and converted them to the fresh weight of food eaten. They then compared the two diets, measured how broad each diet was and how much they overlapped, sorted prey by size and by where the prey lives, and compared what was eaten with how many small mammals were available, from live-trapping.

### 2. What they found

What badgers ate

- Small mammals and plants took turns as the main food. Microtus voles were the most important food, over 90% of them common voles.

- Maize was the most important plant food all year round.

- Other animal foods, including earthworms and beetles, were eaten rarely or in small amounts.

What martens ate

- Small mammals and plants again, with the common vole the main prey.

- Brown hare was eaten all year except winter, in small amounts. Birds included sparrows, nuthatches, starlings, a pheasant and eggs. Martens also ate lizards, frogs and fish, scavenged dog and cat carcasses and small amounts of deer and wild boar, and ate honey bees, sometimes with nest parts and wax, probably from raiding hives.

- Plant food was mostly wild fruit in season: blackthorn, rose-hips and pear.

Changes over time

- After the very cold, long winter of 2002/2003, both ate fewer small mammals (significantly so for martens) and more plants. Badgers also ate more birds.

- Small mammal numbers fell as abandoned fields were ploughed and rose with the area of abandoned fields. Yet neither predator’s small mammal eating followed small mammal numbers.

- Martens ate fewer small mammals and more plants as forest cover increased. Badgers showed no such link.

Comparing the two

- Martens ate significantly more birds than badgers. Otherwise there were no significant differences.

- Both diets were very narrow (badger narrower than marten), even though badgers ate 38 and martens 49 different animal prey types, plus 11 plant types.

- On average, the two diets overlapped by 67.1%. The only overlap below 30% was in spring 2003, after the long winter (8.8%).

- Both ate mainly prey of 15 to 50 g, mainly ground-living prey (badger 98.8%, marten 86.1%), and mainly open-field prey (badger 77.8%, marten 55.2%). Martens ate more tree-living prey (12.9%).

- Both preferred open-field Microtus voles and avoided the forest-living bank vole, Apodemus mice and shrews. The only significant difference in preference was for Apodemus mice.

### 3. What they concluded

- In this farmland, badgers and martens ate the same main and back-up foods, hunted the same kinds of prey and preferred the same voles. The badger’s heavy reliance on small mammals differs from most European and earlier Hungarian studies.

- The two can live together with a high diet overlap and no food partitioning because their main foods were not limited in this area during the study. Differences between them reflect individual feeding patterns rather than niche separation.

- Food changes followed weather (the cold winter and dry summer) and land-use change (ploughing of abandoned fields).

- They may still separate in other ways, such as habitat or activity time. The authors suggest radio-telemetry, and DNA methods to tell stone and pine marten scats apart. They suggest most marten scats probably came from stone martens.

### 4. How tracking was or was not used

The whole study rests on finding and identifying scats along a fixed route. Badger scats were collected from latrines near setts. The authors state that stone marten and pine marten scats could not be told apart in the field by size, shape, smell or associated tracks, so the two species were combined. The paper does not say how badger scats were told from marten scats, or from those of the golden jackals and red foxes also present. No trailing was reported.

### 5. Tracker or observer certification

Not reported. The paper does not say who collected or identified the scats in the field.

### 6. Other technologies, skills or innovations

- Microscope identification of food remains (hair, teeth, feathers, earthworm bristles) using published keys and the authors’ own reference collections.

- Converting dry food remains to fresh weight eaten with published conversion factors, to give a more realistic picture than counting how often a food appears.

- Live-trapping (capture-mark-recapture) to measure small mammal numbers, compared with what the predators ate.

### 7. Implications for conservation (from the paper)

- Turning abandoned fields back into ploughland reduced small mammals and shifted both predators towards plant food.

- Plentiful food in Central European farmland helps explain how 10 to 12 carnivore species can live side by side in Hungarian habitats.

### 8. Implications for tracking (Original Wisdom's observations)

_These are Original Wisdom's observations, not the authors'._

- The authors could not separate stone marten from pine marten scats by sight, smell or tracks, so the two species had to be lumped together. This shows a real limit of field scat identification between closely related species, and why the authors point to DNA testing for the future.

## Cite this summary

Lawrence, K. 2026. Summary of: Feeding Habits of Sympatric Mustelids in an Agricultural Area of Hungary (Lanszki and Heltai, 2011). Original Wisdom, Tracking Literature. https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2011-lanszki-heltai-feeding-habits-sympatric-mustelids/