Abstract
Top-predators contribute to ecosystem resilience, yet individuals or populations are often subject to lethal control to protect livestock, managed game or humans from predation. Such management actions sometimes attract concern that lethal control might affect top-predator function in ways ultimately detrimental to biodiversity conservation. The primary function of a predator is predation, which is often investigated by assessing their diet. We therefore use data on prey remains found in 4,298 Australian dingo scats systematically collected from three arid sites over a four year period to experimentally assess the effects of repeated broad-scale poison-baiting programs on dingo diet. Indices of dingo dietary diversity and similarity were either identical or near-identical in baited and adjacent unbaited treatment areas in each case, demonstrating no control-induced change to dingo diets. Associated studies on dingoes' movement behaviour and interactions with sympatric mesopredators were similarly unaffected by poison-baiting. These results indicate that mid-sized top-predators with flexible and generalist diets (such as dingoes) may be resilient to ongoing and moderate levels of population control without substantial alteration of their diets and other related aspects of their ecological function.
Highlights
Terrestrial carnivores face energetic constraints that influence many aspects their breeding, feeding and social ecology [1,2]
Quinyambie Station is located in the sandy Strzelecki Desert (230.871887, 140.970354), has a mean annual rainfall (MAR) of,160 mm, and is comprised of parallel sand dunes dominated by hopbush (Dodonaea viscosa), buckbush (Salsola kali), and a variety of grasses and burrs including kerosene grass (Aristida spp.) and copperburr (Sclerolaena spp.)
Brillouin’s index values showed that the diversity of prey consumed by dingoes was near-identical between baited and unbaited areas at each site, indicating that dingoes in baited areas selected neither a wider nor narrower range of prey than dingoes in unbaited areas
Summary
Terrestrial carnivores face energetic constraints that influence many aspects their breeding, feeding and social ecology [1,2]. Smaller carnivores are often highly fecund, breeding continually throughout the year and adopting generalist diets primarily comprising of invertebrates and small mammals. Such carnivores might be typified by European badgers (Meles meles) or feral cats (Felis catus) Mid-sized carnivores in this weight range often exhibit hunting strategies that can reflect aspects of either larger or smaller carnivores, which can be modulated by various social constraints. These consumptive and non-consumptive functional effects of carnivores can strongly influence the structure and resilience of food webs and indirectly enhance biodiversity conservation [8,9,10]
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