Abstract
Home ranges have been widely-used as ecological tools, though using home range estimates in decision-support for conservation biology is a relatively new idea. However, trophic levels are rarely taken into consideration when estimating home range. This lapse could present issues when interpreting past studies, especially in policy-based conservation. The objectives of this study were to survey the current literature, to critically analyse published articles with home range analyses, and to compare home range size by species’ trophic level. We predicted that animals residing in higher trophic levels would have significantly larger home ranges than animals occupying lower trophic levels. We found that terrestrial carnivores had larger home ranges than terrestrial herbivores, though terrestrial mesocarnivores had the largest home ranges. We also found that aquatic herbivores had larger home ranges than both aquatic carnivores and aquatic mesocarnivores. Our results are important to consider for planning and management sectors, to avoid the implementation of ineffective conservation policies.
Highlights
Home range, or the area in which an animal lives and moves on a periodic basis [1], has been a long-used concept in ecological studies
We found that mesocarnivores tended to have the largest range size of all the trophic levels; this can be attributed to inter-specific competition for forage between mesocarnivores and apex carnivores [7]
Many studies used either minimum convex polygons or Kernel density estimations to determine home range estimates which can lead to inaccurate results, though a few authors chose to use both methods to improve the accuracy of their estimations
Summary
The area in which an animal lives and moves on a periodic basis [1], has been a long-used concept in ecological studies. In comparison, using home ranges in planning or decision-making contexts is a relatively new idea [4]. There have not yet been any analyses reviewing home range studies in the context of trophic levels. Trophic cascades can occur as a top-down process, where a change in the abundance, distribution, or behaviour of consumer species will trickle down the food chain to affect herbivores and vegetation or as a bottom-up process, where a change in vegetation will affect the abundance and distribution of herbivores and carnivores [5,6,7]. The same species can hold multiple trophic levels depending on the community composition of a region [8]. A coyote in an area with wolves may be considered a mesocarnivore, or intermediate carnivore, and consume mainly hares, while a coyote in an area without wolves may be considered an PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0173361 March 7, 2017
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