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Interactions between carnivore species: limited spatiotemporal partitioning between apex predator and smaller carnivores in a Mediterranean protected area
BACKGROUND: There is need of information on ecological interactions that keystone species such as apex predators establish in ecosystems recently recolonised. Interactions among carnivore species have the potential to influence community-level processes, with consequences for ecosystem dynamics. Alt...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10210480/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37231517 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12983-023-00489-w |
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author | Ferretti, Francesco Oliveira, Raquel Rossa, Mariana Belardi, Irene Pacini, Giada Mugnai, Sara Fattorini, Niccolò Lazzeri, Lorenzo |
author_facet | Ferretti, Francesco Oliveira, Raquel Rossa, Mariana Belardi, Irene Pacini, Giada Mugnai, Sara Fattorini, Niccolò Lazzeri, Lorenzo |
author_sort | Ferretti, Francesco |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: There is need of information on ecological interactions that keystone species such as apex predators establish in ecosystems recently recolonised. Interactions among carnivore species have the potential to influence community-level processes, with consequences for ecosystem dynamics. Although avoidance of apex predators by smaller carnivores has been reported, there is increasing evidence that the potential for competitive-to-facilitative interactions is context-dependent. In a protected area recently recolonised by the wolf Canis lupus and hosting abundant wild prey (3 ungulate species, 20–30 individuals/km(2), together), we used 5-year food habit analyses and 3-year camera trapping to (i) investigate the role of mesocarnivores (4 species) in the wolf diet; (ii) test for temporal, spatial, and fine-scale spatiotemporal association between mesocarnivores and the wolf. RESULTS: Wolf diet was dominated by large herbivores (86% occurrences, N = 2201 scats), with mesocarnivores occurring in 2% scats. We collected 12,808 carnivore detections over > 19,000 camera trapping days. We found substantial (i.e., generally ≥ 0.75, 0–1 scale) temporal overlap between mesocarnivores—in particular red fox—and the wolf, with no support for negative temporal or spatial associations between mesocarnivore and wolf detection rates. All the species were nocturnal/crepuscular and results suggested a minor role of human activity in modifying interspecific spatiotemporal partitioning. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that the local great availability of large prey to wolves limited negative interactions towards smaller carnivores, thus reducing the potential for spatiotemporal avoidance. Our study emphasises that avoidance patterns leading to substantial spatiotemporal partitioning are not ubiquitous in carnivore guilds. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12983-023-00489-w. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10210480 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-102104802023-05-26 Interactions between carnivore species: limited spatiotemporal partitioning between apex predator and smaller carnivores in a Mediterranean protected area Ferretti, Francesco Oliveira, Raquel Rossa, Mariana Belardi, Irene Pacini, Giada Mugnai, Sara Fattorini, Niccolò Lazzeri, Lorenzo Front Zool Research BACKGROUND: There is need of information on ecological interactions that keystone species such as apex predators establish in ecosystems recently recolonised. Interactions among carnivore species have the potential to influence community-level processes, with consequences for ecosystem dynamics. Although avoidance of apex predators by smaller carnivores has been reported, there is increasing evidence that the potential for competitive-to-facilitative interactions is context-dependent. In a protected area recently recolonised by the wolf Canis lupus and hosting abundant wild prey (3 ungulate species, 20–30 individuals/km(2), together), we used 5-year food habit analyses and 3-year camera trapping to (i) investigate the role of mesocarnivores (4 species) in the wolf diet; (ii) test for temporal, spatial, and fine-scale spatiotemporal association between mesocarnivores and the wolf. RESULTS: Wolf diet was dominated by large herbivores (86% occurrences, N = 2201 scats), with mesocarnivores occurring in 2% scats. We collected 12,808 carnivore detections over > 19,000 camera trapping days. We found substantial (i.e., generally ≥ 0.75, 0–1 scale) temporal overlap between mesocarnivores—in particular red fox—and the wolf, with no support for negative temporal or spatial associations between mesocarnivore and wolf detection rates. All the species were nocturnal/crepuscular and results suggested a minor role of human activity in modifying interspecific spatiotemporal partitioning. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that the local great availability of large prey to wolves limited negative interactions towards smaller carnivores, thus reducing the potential for spatiotemporal avoidance. Our study emphasises that avoidance patterns leading to substantial spatiotemporal partitioning are not ubiquitous in carnivore guilds. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12983-023-00489-w. BioMed Central 2023-05-25 /pmc/articles/PMC10210480/ /pubmed/37231517 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12983-023-00489-w Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Ferretti, Francesco Oliveira, Raquel Rossa, Mariana Belardi, Irene Pacini, Giada Mugnai, Sara Fattorini, Niccolò Lazzeri, Lorenzo Interactions between carnivore species: limited spatiotemporal partitioning between apex predator and smaller carnivores in a Mediterranean protected area |
title | Interactions between carnivore species: limited spatiotemporal partitioning between apex predator and smaller carnivores in a Mediterranean protected area |
title_full | Interactions between carnivore species: limited spatiotemporal partitioning between apex predator and smaller carnivores in a Mediterranean protected area |
title_fullStr | Interactions between carnivore species: limited spatiotemporal partitioning between apex predator and smaller carnivores in a Mediterranean protected area |
title_full_unstemmed | Interactions between carnivore species: limited spatiotemporal partitioning between apex predator and smaller carnivores in a Mediterranean protected area |
title_short | Interactions between carnivore species: limited spatiotemporal partitioning between apex predator and smaller carnivores in a Mediterranean protected area |
title_sort | interactions between carnivore species: limited spatiotemporal partitioning between apex predator and smaller carnivores in a mediterranean protected area |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10210480/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37231517 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12983-023-00489-w |
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