2018
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.1582
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Top carnivore decline has cascading effects on scavengers and carrion persistence

Abstract: Top carnivores have suffered widespread global declines, with welldocumented effects on mesopredators and herbivores. We know less about how carnivores affect ecosystems through scavenging. Tasmania's top carnivore, the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii), has suffered severe disease-induced population declines, providing a natural experiment on the role of scavenging in structuring communities. Using remote cameras and experimentally placed carcasses, we show that mesopredators consume more carrion in area… Show more

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Cited by 84 publications
(142 citation statements)
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“…In Tasmania, Australia, areas where Tasmanian devils ( Sarcophilus harrisii ) have declined due to facial tumour disease have resulted in an increased abundance of feral cats ( Felis catus ) and forest ravens ( Corvus tasmanicus ) (Cunningham et al . ). The authors show that forest ravens have increased across all of Tasmania during the period of Tasmanian devil decline.…”
Section: Empirical Support For the Mesoscavenger Release Hypothesismentioning
confidence: 97%
See 1 more Smart Citation
“…In Tasmania, Australia, areas where Tasmanian devils ( Sarcophilus harrisii ) have declined due to facial tumour disease have resulted in an increased abundance of feral cats ( Felis catus ) and forest ravens ( Corvus tasmanicus ) (Cunningham et al . ). The authors show that forest ravens have increased across all of Tasmania during the period of Tasmanian devil decline.…”
Section: Empirical Support For the Mesoscavenger Release Hypothesismentioning
confidence: 97%
“…Similarly, carrion persisted 2.6 times longer in areas where Tasmanian devils declined due to a facial tumour disease (Cunningham et al . ). Carcasses were scavenged three times slower in the absence of vultures in the Laikipia District of central Kenya (Ogada et al .…”
Section: Empirical Support For the Mesoscavenger Release Hypothesismentioning
confidence: 97%
“…In addition to predation pressure, energetic state influences an animal's GUD (Brown 1992, Bedoya-Perez et al 2013. Other research shows that devils modify the behaviour of mesopredators and prey; for example, spotted-tailed quolls Dasyurus maculatus temporally partition activity to avoid devils at high density (Cunningham et al 2019a), and feral cats Felis catus willingly feed on carcasses in areas where devils are rare, but less so in areas where devils are abundant, possibly a response to increased risk of encountering a devil at a carcass (Cunningham et al 2018). Maria Island and the control region were both exposed to similarly low rainfall preceding the 'after' period, yet the control region saw a significantly larger drop in GUDs, and the two regions had significantly different slopes.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Quolls shifted their activity peak from dawn, when devils are abundant, to dusk, when devils were rare, strongly suggesting competitive release. Carrion is a resource that is largely unavailable to quolls where devils are abundant, but is used by them where devils have declined (Cunningham et al 2018). Interaction plots from GAMs predicting the temporal activity of a species based on changes in the devil population.…”
Section: Carnivore Responses and Competitionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Interference competition in carnivores, involving aggressive exclusion from a resource (Linnell and Strand 2000), is probably a stronger driver of temporal partitioning than exploitation competition (Carothers and Jaksić 1984). Devils aggressively protect carcasses and exclude other species from feeding (Cunningham et al 2018), but there is only anecdotal information about devils killing or actively persecuting mesopredators (Jones 2003), as some other top predators do (Palomares and Caro 1999). Devils additionally pose a strong risk of kleptoparasitism for quolls, but less so for cats due to their smaller prey size.…”
Section: Carnivore Responses and Competitionmentioning
confidence: 99%