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Carcass detection and consumption by facultative scavengers in forest ecosystem highlights the value of their ecosystem services
Scavenging is a common feeding behavior that provides ecosystem services by removing potentially infectious waste from the landscape. The importance of facultative scavenging is often overlooked, but likely becomes especially important in ecosystems without obligate scavengers. Here, we investigated...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9525280/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36180480 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-20465-4 |
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author | Inagaki, Akino Allen, Maximilian L. Maruyama, Tetsuya Yamazaki, Koji Tochigi, Kahoko Naganuma, Tomoko Koike, Shinsuke |
author_facet | Inagaki, Akino Allen, Maximilian L. Maruyama, Tetsuya Yamazaki, Koji Tochigi, Kahoko Naganuma, Tomoko Koike, Shinsuke |
author_sort | Inagaki, Akino |
collection | PubMed |
description | Scavenging is a common feeding behavior that provides ecosystem services by removing potentially infectious waste from the landscape. The importance of facultative scavenging is often overlooked, but likely becomes especially important in ecosystems without obligate scavengers. Here, we investigated the ecological function of vertebrate facultative scavengers in removing ungulate carcasses from Japanese forests that lack obligate scavengers. We found that mammals detected carcasses first more often than birds, and that raccoon dogs (Nyctereutes procyonoides) were the most frequent scavenger to first detect carcasses. However, we found no evidence of there being species that signal the location of carrion to other species via social cues. Instead, higher temperatures promoted earlier detection of the carcasses by scavengers, likely related to increased olfactory signals. The carcasses were completely consumed on average in 7.0 days, reasonably similar to other systems regardless of habitat, indicating that facultative scavengers are providing ecosystem services. Larger carcasses tended to take longer to deplete, but carcasses were consumed faster in warmer temperatures. Our results indicate that facultative scavengers were capable of consuming carrion and contributing ecosystem services in a forest ecosystem that lacks obligate scavengers. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9525280 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-95252802022-10-02 Carcass detection and consumption by facultative scavengers in forest ecosystem highlights the value of their ecosystem services Inagaki, Akino Allen, Maximilian L. Maruyama, Tetsuya Yamazaki, Koji Tochigi, Kahoko Naganuma, Tomoko Koike, Shinsuke Sci Rep Article Scavenging is a common feeding behavior that provides ecosystem services by removing potentially infectious waste from the landscape. The importance of facultative scavenging is often overlooked, but likely becomes especially important in ecosystems without obligate scavengers. Here, we investigated the ecological function of vertebrate facultative scavengers in removing ungulate carcasses from Japanese forests that lack obligate scavengers. We found that mammals detected carcasses first more often than birds, and that raccoon dogs (Nyctereutes procyonoides) were the most frequent scavenger to first detect carcasses. However, we found no evidence of there being species that signal the location of carrion to other species via social cues. Instead, higher temperatures promoted earlier detection of the carcasses by scavengers, likely related to increased olfactory signals. The carcasses were completely consumed on average in 7.0 days, reasonably similar to other systems regardless of habitat, indicating that facultative scavengers are providing ecosystem services. Larger carcasses tended to take longer to deplete, but carcasses were consumed faster in warmer temperatures. Our results indicate that facultative scavengers were capable of consuming carrion and contributing ecosystem services in a forest ecosystem that lacks obligate scavengers. Nature Publishing Group UK 2022-09-30 /pmc/articles/PMC9525280/ /pubmed/36180480 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-20465-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This 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/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Inagaki, Akino Allen, Maximilian L. Maruyama, Tetsuya Yamazaki, Koji Tochigi, Kahoko Naganuma, Tomoko Koike, Shinsuke Carcass detection and consumption by facultative scavengers in forest ecosystem highlights the value of their ecosystem services |
title | Carcass detection and consumption by facultative scavengers in forest ecosystem highlights the value of their ecosystem services |
title_full | Carcass detection and consumption by facultative scavengers in forest ecosystem highlights the value of their ecosystem services |
title_fullStr | Carcass detection and consumption by facultative scavengers in forest ecosystem highlights the value of their ecosystem services |
title_full_unstemmed | Carcass detection and consumption by facultative scavengers in forest ecosystem highlights the value of their ecosystem services |
title_short | Carcass detection and consumption by facultative scavengers in forest ecosystem highlights the value of their ecosystem services |
title_sort | carcass detection and consumption by facultative scavengers in forest ecosystem highlights the value of their ecosystem services |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9525280/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36180480 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-20465-4 |
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