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48 results for “prey availability”
Prey availability influences the effect of boldness on reproductive success in a mammalian predator
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Data from: Prey availability and ambient temperature influence carrion persistence in the boreal forest
<p>1. Scavenging by vertebrates can have important impacts on food web stability and persistence, and can alter the distribution of nutrients throughout the landscape. However, scavenging communities have been understudied in most regions around the globe, and we lack understanding of the biotic drivers of vertebrate scavenging dynamics.</p> <p>2. In this paper, we examined how changes in prey density and carrion biomass caused by population cycles of a primary prey species, the snowshoe hare (<i>Lepus americanus</i>), influence scavenging communities in the northern boreal forest. We further examined the impact of habitat and temperature on scavenging dynamics.</p> <p>3. We monitored the persistence time, time until first scavenger, and number of species scavenging experimentally-placed hare carcasses over four consecutive years in the southwestern Yukon. We simultaneously monitored hare density and carrion biomass to examine their influence relative to temperature, habitat, and seasonal effects. For the primary scavengers, we developed species-specific scavenging models to determine variation on the effects of these factors across species, and determine which species may be driving temporal patterns in the entire community.</p> <p>4. We found that the efficiency of the scavenging community was affected by hare density, with carcass persistence decreasing when snowshoe hare densities declined, mainly due to increased scavenging rates by Canada lynx (<i>Lynx canadensis</i>). However, prey density did not influence the number of species scavenging a given carcass, suggesting prey abundance affects carrion recycling but not necessarily the number of connections in the food web. In addition, scavenging rates increased in warmer temperatures, and there were strong seasonal effects on the richness of the vertebrate scavenging community.</p> <p>5. Our results demonstrate that vertebrate scavenging communities are sensitive to changes in species' demography and environmental change, and that future assessments of food web dynamics should consider links established through scavenging.</p>
Coexistence of predators in time: effects of season and prey availability on species activity within a Mediterranean carnivore guild
<p>1. The degree of coexistence among predators can determine the structure of ecological communities. Niche partitioning is a common strategy applied by species to enhance their coexistence. Diet, habitat or time use can be responsible for segregation among carnivore species, the latter factor being the least studied in Mediterranean ecosystems. Terrestrial medium-sized carnivores (i.e. mesocarnivores) carry out important functions in ecosystems and identifying their interactions is essential for their conservation.</p> <p>2. In this study, we explore the activity of a terrestrial mesocarnivore guild in order to determine seasonal differences on daily activity patterns of competitors and prey. We also investigate how the abundance of a common mesocarnivore prey in the region, small mammals, influences the activity of predators.</p> <p>3. During a year, camera trap devices (n=18) were installed in Montseny Natural Park (Catalan Pre-Coastal Range, Nort-East Iberian Peninsula), a region that hosts five mesocarnivore species. Camera trapping detections were used to estimate their daily activity patterns and corresponding overlaps. We also surveyed small mammal plots (n=5) in order to calculate prey abundance and test its effect on the relative activity of each carnivore species.</p> <p>4. Despite all target mesocarnivores are mainly nocturnal, the activity overlap among them varies according to species particularities and season. Red fox (Vulpes vulpes) appears as a generalist species in terms of time use, whereas stone marten (Martes foina) and genet (Genetta genetta) show the most similar activity patterns and both of them seem to be positively influenced by small mammal abundance. Overall, the diversity found in the way mesocarnivore species use time could facilitate their coexistence.</p> <p>5. Despite activity pattern similarities among carnivore species should not be directly translated to negative interactions, they can have a strong influence in habitat and resource-limited ecosystems. Therefore, activity overlaps should be taken into account when discussing wildlife management actions.</p>
Data from: Seabirds vary responses to supplemental food under dynamic natural prey availability and feeding aggregation composition
While foraging, a predator can feed solitarily or in a group. The net energy gain of joining a group is predicted to vary with prey patch quality, species-specific prey capture behavior and the size and species composition of the predator group. In coastal Newfoundland, Canada, capelin (Mallotus villosus), a key forage fish, migrates inshore to spawn during the summer, resulting in a dramatic shift in prey availability. During July-August, 2015-2017, we examined the numerical and behavioral responses of procellarid (Great Shearwater Ardenna gravis, Sooty Shearwater A. grisea, Northern Fulmar Fulmarus glacialis) and gull species (Herring Gull Larus argentatus, Great Black-backed Gull L. marinus) to fish offal under varying capelin availability as well as flock size and composition using an at-sea experiment on the northeast Newfoundland coast. The experiment consisted of providing a offal every 30 s (10-min experimental period), along with 10-min control periods before and after. We recorded the species-specific number of birds on the water, the number of birds simultaneously attempting to capture offal, and the number of successful attempts ('foraging success'). The number of birds on the water was lower during high capelin availability for all species, except for Northern Fulmar. The number of conspecifics simultaneously attempting increased with the number of conspecifics on the water, but plateaued at different numbers (4-17) for each species. The species-specific proportion of successful attempts (i.e. 'foraging success') varied with flock size and composition (i.e. number of conspecifics, heterospecifics, species). Foraging success of Herring Gulls and fulmars were moderately affected by flock size and composition, suggesting that they may be dominant competitors. Findings suggest that seabirds rely more heavily on supplemental food sources, such as fisheries discards and offal, when natural prey availability declines, potentially resulting in a higher risk of by-catch during fisheries activities as forage fish stocks decline.
Data from: Impact of wild prey availability on livestock predation by snow leopards
An increasing proportion of the world's poor is rearing livestock today, and the global livestock population is growing. Livestock predation by large carnivores and their retaliatory killing is becoming an economic and conservation concern. A common recommendation for carnivore conservation and for reducing predation on livestock is to increase wild prey populations based on the assumption that the carnivores will consume this alternative food. Livestock predation, however, could either reduce or intensify with increases in wild prey depending on prey choice and trends in carnivore abundance. We show that the extent of livestock predation by the endangered snow leopard Panthera uncia intensifies with increases in the density of wild ungulate prey, and subsequently stabilizes. We found that snow leopard density, estimated at seven sites, was a positive linear function of the density of wild ungulates—the preferred prey—and showed no discernible relationship with livestock density. We also found that modelled livestock predation increased with livestock density. Our results suggest that snow leopard conservation would benefit from an increase in wild ungulates, but that would intensify the problem of livestock predation for pastoralists. The potential benefits of increased wild prey abundance in reducing livestock predation can be overwhelmed by a resultant increase in snow leopard populations. Snow leopard conservation efforts aimed at facilitating increases in wild prey must be accompanied by greater assistance for better livestock protection and offsetting the economic damage caused by carnivores.
Data from: Combined measurements of prey availability explain habitat selection in foraging seabirds
Understanding links between habitat characteristics and foraging efficiency help to predict how environmental change could influence populations of top-predators. This study examines whether measurements of prey (clupeids) availability varied over stratification gradients, and determined if any of those measurements coincided with aggregations of foraging seabirds (common guillemot Uria aalge, Manx shearwater Puffinus puffinus) in the Celtic Sea, UK. The probability of encountering foraging seabirds was highest around fronts between mixed and stratified water. Prey were denser and shallower in mixed water, and encounters with prey most frequent in stratified water. Therefore, no single measurement of increased prey availability coincided with the location of fronts. However, when considered in combination, overall prey availability was highest in these areas. These results show that top-predators may select foraging habitats by trading-off several elements of prey availability. By showing that top-predators select areas where prey are switching between behaviours, these results also identify a mechanism that could explain the wider importance of edge habitats for these taxa. As offshore developments (e.g. marine renewable energy installations) change patterns of stratification, their construction may have consequences on the foraging efficiency of seabirds.
Data from: 18S rRNA metabarcoding diet analysis of the predatory fish community across seasonal changes in prey availability
Predator-prey relationships are important ecological interactions, affecting biotic community composition and energy flow through a system, and are of interest to ecologists and managers. Morphological diet analysis has been the primary method used to quantify the diets of predators, but emerging molecular techniques using genetic data can provide more accurate estimates of relative diet composition. This study used sequences from the 18S V9 rRNA barcoding region to identify prey items in the gastrointestinal (GI) tracts of predatory fishes. Predator GI samples were taken from the Black River, Cheboygan Co., MI, USA (n=367 samples, 12 predator species) during periods of high prey availability, including the larval stage of regionally threatened lake sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens Rafinesque 1817) in late May/early June of 2015 and of relatively lower prey availability in early July of 2015. DNA was extracted and sequenced from 355 samples (96.7%), and prey DNA was identified in 286 of the 355 samples (80.6%). Prey were grouped into 33 ecologically significant taxonomic groups based on the lowest taxonomic level sequences that could be identified using sequences available on GenBank. Changes in the makeup of diet composition, dietary overlap, and predator preference were analyzed comparing the periods of high and low prey abundance. Some predator species exhibited compositional changes in diet. Dietary overlap was slightly but significantly higher during the period of high prey abundance. There was little evidence for large changes in predator preference between the two periods. This study demonstrates the utility of molecular diet analysis in understanding predator-prey interactions in complex freshwater communities.
Data from: Mismatch between dietary requirements for lipid by a predator and availability of lipid in prey
Growth is an important factor in predicting an organism's overall success as an adult. Understanding how abiotic and biotic factors influence body size is key to predicting how environmental changes will impact organisms and predicting optimal behaviors under varying conditions. Food items can vary widely in nutrient content and this variation can affect growth. We tested how the quantity and macronutrient content of live prey affected the growth of juvenile jumping spiders, Phiddipus audax, using 420 spiderlings raised on one of 21 diets. In addition, we measured the nutrient content of prey from the field and compared average prey nutrient content with the diet at which spiders maximized growth. Our results show that the quantity and nutrient content of prey have significant and interacting effects on the growth of an actively hunting predator. In particular, spiders grew larger in body size (tibia/patella length and posterior lateral eye width) and were heavier on diets with higher lipid content. Yet, data on the nutrient content of prey from the field shows that most potential prey have high protein and low lipid content in their bodies. This apparent mismatch between spider nutritional requirements and prey nutrient availability likely presents a challenge to spiders seeking to maximize growth in the field. Several hypotheses for how these predators overcome this challenge to reach the large body sizes observed in the field are discussed.
Water availability rather than temperature control soil fauna community structure and prey-predator interactions
<p>The ongoing climate change may strongly impact soil biodiversity with cascading effects on the processes they drive. Thus, it is of prime interest to improve our knowledge about responses by soil organisms such as collembolans to expected shifts in environmental conditions by considering communities comprising both detritivores and predators.</p> <p>The aim of the present study was to evaluate how simulated climate change and predation under laboratory conditions alter a collembolan community.</p> <p>To infer the impact of climate change, we applied a decreased level of soil moisture (60% <em>vs.</em> 30% soil water holding capacity) and an increasing air temperature (15 °C <em>vs. </em>25 °C) to a collembolan community constituted by four species (<em>Folsomia candida</em>, <em>Protaphorura fimata</em>, <em>Proisotoma minuta</em> and <em>Mesaphorura macrochaeta</em>) exhibiting distinct functional traits, e.g. body size and furca presence, in presence or absence of a predatory gamasid Acari (<em>Stratiolaelaps scimitus</em>) during two months in a microcosm experiment.</p> <p>We observed that decreasing soil moisture altered the collembolan community with species-specific responses. Interaction between soil moisture, temperature and predation indicates that low soil moisture reduced total collembolan abundance especially i) by suppressing the positive effect of increasing temperature and ii) by increasing the predatory control on collembolan abundance.</p> <p>These results highlight that soil moisture is the major driver of Collembola community and by consequence, a shift in climatic parameters with the ongoing climate change should strongly modify the Collembola community structure and the predator-prey interaction. Our findings are highly important since a strengthening of predation impact on Collembola prey could have major consequences on the whole soil food web being able to lead to a slowdown of key ecosystem processes they drive (e.g., litter decomposition and nutrient recycling). Finally, our study promotes the need to study more complex systems considering distinct soil-dwelling species, their functional traits and their trophic interactions to better predict the ecosystem responses to the ongoing climate change.</p>
Data from: 18S rRNA metabarcoding diet analysis of the predatory fish community across seasonal changes in prey availability
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Data from: Combined measurements of prey availability explain habitat selection in foraging seabirds
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Data from: Mismatch between dietary requirements for lipid by a predator and availability of lipid in prey
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Data from: Ocean warming increases availability of crustacean prey via riskier behaviour
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Data from: Season, prey availability, sex and age explain prey size selection in a large solitary carnivore
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Data from: From feces to data: a metabarcoding method for analyzing consumed and available prey in a bird-insect food web
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Data from: Impact of wild prey availability on livestock predation by snow leopards
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Water availability rather than temperature control soil fauna community structure and prey-predator interactions
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Data from: Prey availability and ambient temperature influence carrion persistence in the boreal forest
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Data from: Seabirds vary responses to supplemental food under dynamic natural prey availability and feeding aggregation composition
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Coexistence of predators in time: effects of season and prey availability on species activity within a Mediterranean carnivore guild
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OpenNeuro
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