Trophic patterns and home‐range size of two generalist urban carnivores: a review

Abstract

Foxes and cats are the most abundant medium‐sized urban carnivores. To date, however, there has been a lack of effort to synthesize data on the spatial and trophic resources used by these two carnivores, despite the importance of this information for assessing their similarity and roles in urban food webs. In this paper, we first synthesize all available information on the trophic patterns and home‐range size of these two predators based on a total of 91 studies. Second, we conduct statistical analyses to test the influence of environmental and biological variables such as regional differences, habitat characteristics, age, and sexual status on their home‐range size and diet patterns within urban habitats, and then evaluate the methods used to investigate these components. Our findings highlight the lack of studies that simultaneously monitor the diet and home‐range size of both predators within urban habitats. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to compare fox and cat home‐range size and diet. Foxes exhibited larger ranges than cats, while intact cats showed larger home ranges than desexed cats. Diet diversity obtained for both predators confirmed their trophic plasticity within urban habitats. Both predators consumed fewer mammals and invertebrates in highly disturbed habitats compared to medium ones. We also found that the procedure of data acquisition significantly influenced fox and cat home‐range sizes. In terms of diet, the type of recovered samples had a significant effect on the diet composition of both predators. To improve our understanding of the relative impact of these two urban carnivores on urban wildlife, we recommend simultaneously studying both species in future studies. Moreover, methodological standards for both diet and home‐range size studies are needed to allow comparisons.

The small home ranges and large local ecological impacts of pet cats

“…The consistency of this result in our large sample size suggests that this is a general trait for pet cats across a variety of urban, suburban and rural habitats around the globe. As predicted, cat movement declined with age and urbanization, males and intact cats moved further, matching previous studies (Hall et al , ; Castañeda et al , ). We also found no support for our hypothesis that cats would restrict their movement in response to the presence of local large predators (i.e.…”

“…The average range size was slightly larger for male cats that were intact (intact males 7.6 ± 4.4 ha, intact females 0.23 ± 0.11 ha, neutered males 3.6 ± 6.0 ha and neutered females 3.0 ± 4.4 ha) and was a significant predictor in our model (Table ). Given the sex differences we observed in our small sample, and the contrasting results on the effect of desexing in two other comparative movement studies (Hall et al , ; Castañeda et al , ), we suggest that this topic deserves more research.…”

“…contrasting results on the effect of desexing in two other comparative movement studies (Hall et al, 2016;Castañeda et al, 2019), we suggest that this topic deserves more research.…”

License to Kill? Domestic Cats Affect a Wide Range of Native Fauna in a Highly Biodiverse Mediterranean Country

“…However, we provided evidence that the strongest impact of domestic cats occurs at the functional structure level of mammal and bird assemblages (Lepczyk et al, 2003;Siracusa, 2010;Bonnington et al, 2013). Domestic cats are apex predators that show at least two reproductive peaks per year (Sogliani and Mori, 2019); thus, they may have few competitors (Castañeda et al, 2018;Sogliani and Mori, 2019) and may rapidly become the most abundant carnivorous species (Loss et al, 2013).…”

Puma (Puma concolor) in the Neighborhood? Records Near Human Settlements and Insights into Human-Carnivore Coexistence in Central Chile

“…A source-sink model of population dynamics from the more abundant source populations in the Andes Range close to the city of Santiago may be another possible cause [ 7 ]. Some carnivores approach cities profiting from resources generated by humans or even establish their ecological niche in cities [ 65 , 66 , 67 ]. However, urban wildlife ecology studies, especially in carnivores, are scarce in South America [ 63 , 68 ].…”