Abstract
Top-predators play stabilising roles in island food webs, including Fraser Island, Australia. Subsidising generalist predators with human-sourced food could disrupt this balance, but has been proposed to improve the overall health of the island’s dingo (Canis lupus dingo) population, which is allegedly ‘starving’ or in ‘poor condition’. We assess this hypothesis by describing the diet and health of dingoes on Fraser Island from datasets collected between 2001 and 2015. Medium-sized mammals (such as bandicoots) and fish were the most common food items detected in dingo scat records. Stomach contents records revealed additional information on diet, such as the occurrence of human-sourced foods. Trail camera records highlighted dingo utilisation of stranded marine fauna, particularly turtles and whales. Mean adult body weights were higher than the national average, body condition scores and abundant-excessive fat reserves indicated a generally ideal-heavy physical condition, and parasite loads were low and comparable to other dingo populations. These data do not support hypotheses that Fraser Island dingoes have restricted diets or are in poor physical condition. Rather, they indicate that dingoes on Fraser Island are capable of exploiting a diverse array of food sources which contributes to the vast majority of dingoes being of good-excellent physical condition.
Highlights
Studies investigating the diet and foraging behaviour of top-predators are fundamental to our understanding of predator-prey relationships and the forces that shape terrestrial ecosystems
We present data on dingo weights, body condition scores, internal fat reserves and parasite prevalence obtained from necropsy reports and other records collected during routine dingo trapping and ear-tagging programs to compliment these datasets
This study confirmed that dingoes on Fraser Island consume a wide variety of food items, ranging in size from insects to whales (Table 2 and Fig. 2)
Summary
Studies investigating the diet and foraging behaviour of top-predators are fundamental to our understanding of predator-prey relationships and the forces that shape terrestrial ecosystems. Knowledge of predator diets can provide valuable insights into the impacts of predators on prey and ecosystems[5,6], the detection of rare or threatened fauna[7,8,9], and the general health, condition and energy requirements of predator populations[3,10] This information may be important for small, island populations of conservation concern. Media reports and other anecdotal information frequently describe dingoes as starving, endangered and/or declining due to lack of food resources, and of generally poor body condition In public discourse these factors are often attributed to alleged mismanagement of dingoes by government agencies[44,45,46,47,35] that restrict dingo access to rubbish dumps and major townships and prohibit dingo-feeding by humans. A lack of available data on Fraser Island dingo ecology fosters these contentions
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