Prey partitioning and livestock consumption in the world’s richest large carnivore assemblage

Abstract

Large mammalian carnivores have undergone catastrophic declines during the Anthropocene across the world. Despite their pivotal roles as apex predators in food webs and ecosystem dynamics, few detailed dietary datasets of large carnivores exist, prohibiting deep understanding of their coexistence and persistence in human-dominated landscapes. Here, we present fine-scaled, quantitative trophic interactions among sympatric carnivores from three assemblages in the Mountains of Southwest China, a global biodiversity hotspot harboring the world's richest large-carnivore diversity, derived from DNA metabarcoding of 1,097 fecal samples. These assemblages comprise a large-carnivore guild ranging from zero to five species along with two mesocarnivore species. We constructed predator-prey food webs for each assemblage and identified 95 vertebrate prey taxa and 260 feeding interactions in sum. Each carnivore species consumed 6-39 prey taxa, and dietary diversity decreased with increased carnivore body mass across guilds. Dietary partitioning was more evident between large-carnivore and mesocarnivore guilds, yet different large carnivores showed divergent proportional utilization of different-sized prey correlating with their own body masses. Large carnivores particularly selected livestock in Tibetan-dominated regions, where the indigenous people show high tolerance toward wild predators. Our results suggest that dietary niche partitioning and livestock subsidies facilitate large-carnivore sympatry and persistence and have key implications for sustainable conservation promoting human-carnivore coexistence.

Snow Leopard Dietary Preferences and Livestock Predation Revealed by Fecal DNA Metabarcoding: No Evidence for Apparent Competition Between Wild and Domestic Prey

“…We used the 2CTAB/PCI method to extract fecal DNA from the samples (Vallet et al, 2007). This method had been used successfully for molecular dietary analysis of various carnivore species (Xiong et al, 2017;Shao et al, 2021). Briefly, we extracted DNA from each sample (100-200 mg from multiple parts) and processed in small batches (typically 23 samples/batch) together with one extraction blank per batch to monitor for cross-contamination.…”

Predator-Prey Interactions between Nonnative Juvenile Largemouth Bass (Micropterus salmoides) and Local Candidate Prey Species in the Pearl River Delta: Predation Capacity, Preference and Growth Performance

“…The theory of optimal foraging behavior stipulates that natural selection will produce optimal food selection plans for animals, as well as optimal timing of looking for and switching resources. Predators are predicted to gain maximum energy in each predation [20,27]. The present research shows that the numbers of each local species killed in the first hour and those in 24 h (RPCN) differed significantly between shrimp and fish.…”

“…This ratio is independent of the relative abundance and directly reflects the differential mortality rates caused by predation activity. Jacobs' index was calculated following the equation as described in [19,20]:…”

Advances and Limitations of Next Generation Sequencing in Animal Diet Analysis

“…For the same species, gender difference in diet may be manifested due to different reproductive tasks undertaken by male and female individuals, and even the individual difference of feeding habit may exist due to personality [ 73 ]. By using DNA metabarcoding, dietary niche partitioning was evident among large mammalian carnivores, and livestock subsidies facilitate large-carnivore sympatry and persistence [ 74 ].…”

“…Hidden biodiversity can be discovered through the use of complementary monitoring of fish diet based on DNA barcoding, which is helpful to understand the complex ecosystem functions [ 80 ]. An overall biodiversity monitoring was evaluated by analyzing the quantitative trophic interactions among sympatric carnivores from three assemblages in the Mountains of Southwest China [ 74 ].…”