Deforestation leads to prey shrinkage for an apex predator in a biodiversity hotspot

Magioli, Marcelo; Ferraz, Kátia Maria Paschoaletto Micchi de Barros

doi:10.1007/s13364-021-00556-9

Cited by 21 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…The high frequency of use of small prey we found for this predator species may be related to changes in prey availability due to anthropic impacts, such as habitat loss and fragmentation. Indeed, according to the studies we analysed, Puma concolor consumes mainly large prey in regions with lower human influence such as Patagonia (Iriarte et al 1991), but feeds mainly on small rodents in study sites within altered landscapes, a pattern that has been found using both faecal content analysis and isotopic analysis (Magioli et al 2014, Magioli & Ferraz 2021. This trophic niche flexibility of Puma concolor may facilitate its ability to persist in human-modified landscapes (De Angelo et al 2011).…”

Section: Carnivorans' Diet Patternsmentioning

confidence: 69%

“…Although we found a clear peak in body mass distributions of mammalian prey for all predators, we also found that many predators display bimodal body mass distributions of prey use, suggesting that these species often supplement their diets with alternative resources outside the optimum size range. The energetic balance resulting from consuming a given prey relates to other factors besides body mass that are intrinsic to the predators, such as other morphophysiological characteristics and behaviour, or to extrinsic factors, such as the determinants of prey availability – biogeography, prey activity patterns and land‐use patterns (Eriksen et al 2011, Beca et al 2017, Mendes et al 2020, Magioli & Ferraz 2021). Variation in prey availability may change the cost–benefit relationship of prey species (Svanbäck & Bolnick 2005) and favour the use of prey outside the expected body size range.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The geography of diet variation in Neotropical Carnivora

Cruz

Muylaert

Galetti³

et al. 2021

Mammal Review

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1. Mammalian carnivores (order Carnivora) perform important regulatory functions in terrestrial food webs. Building a comprehensive knowledge of the dietary patterns of carnivorans and the factors determining such patterns is essential for improving our understanding of the role of carnivorans in ecosystem functioning. 2. In the Neotropics, there are 64 extant species of terrestrial Carnivora, but information on their trophic ecology is diffuse. We compiled and analysed the available quantitative dietary data for Neotropical carnivorans, aiming to detect patterns of intraspecific and interspecific dietary variation at a large geographical scale. 3. The resulting database encompasses information on trophic interactions of 37 native carnivoran species from six families across 14 countries. There are clear geographical biases towards southern Brazil, Chile, and Argentina, and a noticeable knowledge gap within the Amazon. Also, most studies are focused on canids and felids, especially Puma concolor, Panthera onca, Cerdocyon thous, Leopardus pardalis, and Chrysocyon brachyurus, whereas for 27 native species, we found no quantitative dietary information. 4. Neotropical carnivorans consume species from at least 651 genera of vertebrates, invertebrates, and plants. We found clear species-specific dietary patterns and marked differences between Neotropical felids and canids. Although predators generally exhibit high levels of consistency in their diets regarding prey body mass, we detected significant intraspecific variation for all species analysed across study sites. 5. Body mass imposes strong constraints on prey use, but biogeographical differences in prey availability and human influence may drive the geographical variation we found. Overall, observed patterns show not only similarities with resource-use patterns found for carnivorans in other continents, such as nestedness driven by body mass, but also differences, such as high levels of frugivory and consumption of invertebrates by canids. Assessing resource-use patterns is

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Section: Carnivorans' Diet Patternsmentioning

confidence: 69%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The geography of diet variation in Neotropical Carnivora

Cruz

Muylaert

Galetti³

et al. 2021

Mammal Review

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“…2019; Magioli, et al . 2019; Magioli & Ferraz, 2021); only hair from adult individuals were collected.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By consuming and trampling seedlings, preying upon or dispersing fruits and their seeds, returning these into the soil with nutrients and serving as prey for large predators, large mammalian herbivores are essential to maintaining diversity in tropical ecosystems (Villar et al . 2020, 2021; Magioli & Ferraz, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dietary expansion facilitates the persistence of a large frugivore in fragmented tropical forests

Magioli

Villar

Jorge

et al. 2021

Animal Conservation

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How species persist in fragmented habitats is essential to understanding species resilience in response to increasing anthropogenic pressures. It has been suggested that expansion in dietary niche allows populations to persist in human-modified landscapes, yet this hypothesis has been poorly tested in highly diverse ecosystems such as tropical forests where frugivory is ubiquitous. Here, we measured dietary niche expansion of a large forest-dwelling mammal, the white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari), in the Atlantic Forest, Brazil, by comparing its diet using stable carbon (δ 13 C) and nitrogen (δ 15 N) isotopes. We collected hair of white-lipped peccaries in three continuous and three fragmented forests and compared δ 13 C and δ 15 N values, resource use and isotopic niches among populations and between forest types. We also tested the relationship between isotopic values of the populations and the forest cover percentage. White-lipped peccaries fed mainly on forest sources (C 3 resources), especially in continuous forests, but 28% of the individuals in fragmented sites also incorporated C 4 resources to some extent. In fragmented forests, the populations had isotopic niches from 3-to 3.6-fold the size of those in continuous forests. This niche expansion was due to the consumption of food items with higher δ 15 N values and C 4 crops. Differences among populations were larger among fragmented forests, suggesting variable site-specific strategies to cope with habitat loss. The mean isotopic values of white-lipped peccary populations were negatively correlated with the loss of forest cover. Some small forest fragments might still retain relatively high habitat quality, and white-lipped peccaries might be able to capitalize on such variety of resources, shifting their diets from those observed in continuous forests. We suggest that high dietary flexibility and dietary expansion toward consumption of non-forest resources might facilitate the persistence of large frugivores in fragmented habitats.

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“…Network approaches have been used for the prediction of risk and dynamics of dengue [18], Chagas disease [19], Rickettsiosis [20], Leishmaniasis [21] and a myriad of infectious diseases in livestock and wildlife [22]. Additionally, prediction of interaction networks is a growing imperative for next-generation biodiversity monitoring, requiring a conceptual framework and a flexible set of tools to predict interactions that is explicitly spatial and temporal in perspective [23][24][25]. Developing better models for prediction of these interactions will rely on integration of data from many sources, and the sources for this data may differ depending on the type of interaction we wish to predict [26].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A roadmap towards predicting species interaction networks (across space and time)

Strydom

Catchen

Banville

et al. 2021

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Networks of species interactions underpin numerous ecosystem processes, but comprehensively sampling these interactions is difficult. Interactions intrinsically vary across space and time, and given the number of species that compose ecological communities, it can be tough to distinguish between a true negative (where two species never interact) from a false negative (where two species have not been observed interacting even though they actually do). Assessing the likelihood of interactions between species is an imperative for several fields of ecology. This means that to predict interactions between species—and to describe the structure, variation, and change of the ecological networks they form—we need to rely on modelling tools. Here, we provide a proof-of-concept, where we show how a simple neural network model makes accurate predictions about species interactions given limited data. We then assess the challenges and opportunities associated with improving interaction predictions, and provide a conceptual roadmap forward towards predictive models of ecological networks that is explicitly spatial and temporal. We conclude with a brief primer on the relevant methods and tools needed to start building these models, which we hope will guide this research programme forward. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Infectious disease macroecology: parasite diversity and dynamics across the globe’.

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Deforestation leads to prey shrinkage for an apex predator in a biodiversity hotspot

Cited by 21 publications

References 46 publications

The geography of diet variation in Neotropical Carnivora

The geography of diet variation in Neotropical Carnivora

Dietary expansion facilitates the persistence of a large frugivore in fragmented tropical forests

A roadmap towards predicting species interaction networks (across space and time)

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