Abstract
Voles can reach high densities with multiannual population fluctuations of large amplitude, and they are at the base of predator communities in Northern Eurasia and Northern America. This status places them at the heart of management conflicts wherein crop protection and health concerns are often raised against conservation issues. Here, a 20‐year survey describes the effects of large variations in grassland vole populations on the densities and the daily theoretical food intakes (TFI) of vole predators based on roadside counts. Our results show how the predator community responded to prey variations of large amplitude and how it reorganized with the increase in a dominant predator, here the red fox, which likely negatively impacted hare, European wildcat, and domestic cat populations. This population increase did not lead to an increase in the average number of predators present in the study area, suggesting compensations among resident species due to intraguild predation or competition. Large variations in vole predator number could be clearly attributed to the temporary increase in the populations of mobile birds of prey in response to grassland vole outbreaks. Our study provides empirical support for more timely and better focused actions in wildlife management and vole population control, and it supports an evidence‐based and constructive dialogue about management targets and options between all stakeholders of such socio‐ecosystems.
Highlights
The relationship between people and rodents is an old one
Voles can reach high densities with multiannual population fluctuations of large amplitude, and they are often considered as pests in temperate farmland (Giraudoux et al, 1997; Jacob et al, 2020)
Our results indicate that in such ecosystem with large variations of grassland prey, the structure of the predator community can change over the long term without changing its overall theoretical food intakes (TFI) variation pattern over a rodent cycle
Summary
The relationship between people and rodents is an old one. Early accounts clearly show that rodents were a destructive agent for crops and a source of disease for many ancient and current societies (Huitu et al, 2009; Krebs, 2013; Villette, 2018). Those outbreaks provide regularly massive quantities (up to >80 kg.ha−1) of prey for many species of carnivorous mammals and birds in grassland and by contrast low densities of secondary prey resources that are less accessible (vegetation and/or antipredation behavior) such as forest, marsh and fallow small mammals (maximum about 3 kg.ha−1) (e.g., bank vole, wood mice, Apodemus sp., field vole, etc.), with periodic (5–6 years) concomitant low densities in every habitats The variation in this predator community structure over the time span of large fluctuations of prey abundance has not been documented yet in this system, limiting both comparisons with ecosystems described in other part of the world where small mammal outbreaks occur (Jacob et al, 2020) or with more simple food webs of northern ecosystems. The aims were to (a) describe how a predator community responds to prey variations of large amplitude, (b) describe how this community reorganizes over the long term with increases in a dominant predator, here the red fox, (c) attempt to quantify the prey consumption of this predator community
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