The good, the bad, and the ugly: space use and intraguild interactions among three opportunistic predators—cat (Felis catus), dog (Canis lupus familiaris), and red fox (Vulpes vulpes)—under human pressure

Abstract

Examples of interspecific interactions have been described for mammalian predators, but less is known regarding disturbances of native predator guilds by domestic predators. We investigated intraguild interactions among three opportunistic predators (dog ( Canis lupus familiaris L., 1758), cat ( Felis catus L., 1758), and red fox ( Vulpes vulpes (L., 1758)) co-occurring in the extensive farmlands of central Poland. Their space use was monitored using tracking stations distributed in field and forest plots along a distance gradient from buildings and analyzed using the occupancy-modeling framework. For all three species occupancy decreased with increased distance from buildings, although for the fox the pattern was relatively weak. The occurrence of cats at the stations was higher in the forest than in the field; for fox and dog, there was a strong variation between study plots. For all three predators, the probability of detection was higher during the night than during the day and varied between the seasons; however, the exact patterns were species-specific. The presence of one predator was also linked to the presence of the other two species—generally, a given species was detected more frequently in the absence of the other two species. We recorded spatiotemporal niche segregation among the three species. We conclude that interspecific antagonistic interactions and differences in foraging ecology are the main drivers shaping co-occurrence of the three species in the agriculture landscape.

Annual variation in prey composition of domestic cats in rural and urban environment

“…Another possible explanation for the autumnal increase in the numbers of rodents caught by cats in rural areas is their higher availability due to agricultural operations. After crops are harvested in the farmland (summer-autumn), rodents become much easier to hunt, and this is the time when cats more frequently penetrate fields (Goszczyński 1977;Krauze-Gryz et al 2012b). The number of birds killed in rural areas fluctuated greatly, reaching a peak in spring (June) and a minimum in late autumn (November), while the number caught in the urban environment remained stable throughout the year.…”

“…At the same time, they do not show normal numerical or functional responses to prey density (Coleman and Temple 1993) as they switch between household food and natural prey depending on accessibility (Liberg 1984;Weber and Daily 1998). As a result, cats can efficiently compete with wild predators (Krauze-Gryz et al 2012b). Urban and suburban cats mainly focus on birds, which results in serious predation rates (Lepczyk et al 2004) or increases in sub-lethal factors, such as a reduction in fecundity (Beckerman et al 2007) or food delivery to chicks (Bonnington et al 2013).…”

“…Consequently, even though food provisioning may reduce individual predation rates, the total impact of cat predation can be severe (reviewed in Baker et al 2005). Furthermore, free-ranging house cats hunt in both natural habitats as well as close to human settlements (Kays and DeWan 2004;Goszczyński et al 2008;Wierzbowska et al 2012), and the latter group are typically avoided by many wild carnivores because of the presence of humans (Krauze-Gryz et al 2012b). Finally, cats exhibit atypical hunting behaviour; i.e., they often kill and leave prey uneaten (Fitzgerald and Turner 2000;Krauze-Gryz et al 2012a;Loyd et al 2013).…”

Sociality in cats: A comparative review

“…In modern times red foxes Vulpes vulpes have been observed killing cats, but nonetheless the two species do not appear to actively avoid one another (Baker et al, 2010;Krauze-Gryz et al, 2012), and predation by commensal foxes may therefore not have been a significant factor in the evolution of domestic cat sociality. By contrast, predation by free-ranging dogs (Baker et al, 2010), which would have been ubiquitous in late Neolithic and Mesolithic settlements, is a more plausible selection pressure.…”

Top‐down limitation of mesopredators by avian top predators: a call for research on cascading effects at the community and ecosystem scale

“…Finally, a new variable to this equation is the increasing predation pressure exerted by feral domestic predators on small vertebrate populations in all human-transformed systems (Loss et al 2013), in particular feral cats Felis catus but also feral dogs Canis lupus familiaris, which may have an overlooked impact on biodiversity (Doherty et al 2017). Feral domestic predators may further interact with the functional role of mesopredators through interspecific antagonistic interactions (Krauze-Gryz et al 2012). What are the consequences of all these changes in terms of food-web structure and ecosystem processes?…”