Caching Behavior of Large Prey by Eurasian Lynx: Quantifying the Anti-Scavenging Benefits

Ivonne J M Teurlings,John Odden,Claudia Melis,John D C Linnell

doi:10.3390/d12090350

Ivonne J M Teurlings, John Odden + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/d12090350

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Abstract

Large solitary felids often kill large prey items that can provide multiple meals. However, being able to utilize these multiple meals requires that they can cache the meat in a manner that delays its discovery by vertebrate and invertebrate scavengers. Covering the kill with vegetation and snow is a commonly observed strategy among felids. This study investigates the utility of this strategy using observational data from Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx)-killed roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) carcasses, and a set of two experiments focused on vertebrate and invertebrate scavengers, respectively. Lynx-killed roe deer that were covered by snow or vegetation were less likely to have been visited by scavengers. Experimentally-deployed video-monitored roe deer carcasses had significantly longer time prior to discovery by avian scavengers when covered with vegetation. Carcass parts placed in cages that excluded vertebrate scavengers had delayed invertebrate activity when covered with vegetation. All three datasets indicated that covering a kill was a successful caching/anti-scavenger strategy. These results can help explain why lynx functional responses reach plateaus at relatively low kill rates. The success of this anti-scavenging behavior therefore has clear effects on the dynamics of a predator–prey system.

Highlights

The impacts of large carnivore predation on wild ungulate populations has received much research focus and considerable effort has been spent on quantifying predation rates as a function of prey density as these are regarded as key parameters to model predator impacts [2,3]
This study provides clear evidence that the simple act of covering a kill with vegetation or snow delays scavenger arrival and the rate of meat loss
The lynx-killed roe deer that were uncovered were were three times more likely to have been found by scavengers than the kills that were covered

Summary

Introduction

The impacts of large carnivore predation on wild ungulate populations has received much research focus and considerable effort has been spent on quantifying predation rates as a function of prey density (i.e., functional responses, [1]) as these are regarded as key parameters to model predator impacts [2,3]. Large solitary felids routinely kill large ungulate prey equal to, or several times heavier than, their body weight that can potentially provide food for multiple days [4,5,6,7] For such species handling and consumption time are likely to exceed search and killing time [8,9]. An ungulate carcass represents a very attractive resource to a range of vertebrate and invertebrate scavengers [10,11,12,13,14,15] The effect of such scavenging and kleptoparasitic loss of kills is believed to be an important driver of kill rates [16], energetics [17,18], and potentially even sociality [19].

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