Abstract
Food-provisioning of wildlife can facilitate reliable up-close encounters desirable by tourists and, consequently, tour operators. Food-provisioning can alter the natural behavior of an animal, encouraging adverse behavior (e.g. begging for food handouts), and affect the reproductive success and the viability of a population. Studies linking food-provisioning to reproductive success are limited due to the lack of long-term datasets available, especially for long-lived species such as marine mammals. In Bunbury, Western Australia, a state-licensed food-provisioning program offers fish handouts to a limited number of free-ranging bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus). Coupled with long-term historical data, this small (<200 individuals), resident dolphin population has been extensively studied for over ten years, offering an opportunity to examine the effect of food-provisioning on the reproductive success of females (ntotal = 63; nprovisioned females = 8). Female reproductive success was estimated as the number of weaned calves produced per reproductive years and calf survival at year one and three years old was investigated. The mean reproductive success of provisioned and non-provisioned females was compared using Bayes factor. We also used generalized linear models (GLMs) to examine female reproductive success in relation to the occurrence of food-provisioning, begging behavior and location (within the study area). Furthermore, we examined the influence of these variables and birth order and climatic fluctuations (e.g. El Niño Southern Oscillation) on calf survival. Bayes factor analyses (Bayes factor = 6.12) and results from the best fitting GLMs showed that female reproductive success and calf survival were negatively influenced by food-provisioning. The negative effects of food-provisioning, although only affecting a small proportion of the adult females’ population (13.2%), are of concern, especially given previous work showing that this population is declining.
Highlights
Food-provisioning of wildlife can facilitate reliable up-close encounters desirable by tourists and, tour operators
In our analyses of reproductive success, Akaike’s Information Criterion (AIC) and BIC values both indicated the model with only provisioning as explanatory variable as the best fitting, with food-provisioned females having lower reproductive success than their non-provisioned counterparts (Wald = −1.703; P value = 0.0886)
Our results showed no effects of location on reproductive success or calf survival, the ongoing expansion of Bunbury waterfront and harbor is a reason for concern
Summary
Food-provisioning of wildlife can facilitate reliable up-close encounters desirable by tourists and, tour operators. Www.nature.com/scientificreports breeding activity and survival, especially during periods of limited resource availability[11], the majority of studies report that food-provisioning used by the tourism industry can have detrimental effects on wildlife[10,12,13,14,15] and in particular when targeting top predators[16]. In the case of cetaceans, provisioning has been linked to unnatural behaviors that can be socially learned, such as patrolling, scavenging, depredation and begging[24,25] These behaviors increase the exposure of individuals to vessels and fishing gear, leading to greater risk of collision and entanglements[13,24,26]. Extensive research has been undertaken in Monkey Mia on the provisioned dolphin population, and this research has informed the WA state management authority to implement procedures that partially addressed the negative effects of food-provisioning[31]
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