@article{10272/24308,
year = {2024},
month = {5},
url = {https://hdl.handle.net/10272/24308},
abstract = {In temperate regions, larger mammalian carrion naturally occurs in terrestrial landscapes as a pulsed resource towards the end of the winter through enhanced ungulate mortality due to starvation or exhaustion. The return of large carnivores in Central Europe provides carrion more equally throughout the year and the active enhancement of carrion for biodiversity by game managers has increased, raising the question of how different scavengers respond to the temporal variation in carrion supply. To address this question, we experimentally deployed 106 cervid carcasses throughout the year in a temperate forest of south-eastern Germany on two types of plots: permanent (i.e., site with multiple subsequent deployments) or random (i.e., site with unique deployment), and reported vertebrate scavenger visitations by camera trapping. Deployment on random or permanent sites did not affect carrion use by any single species. Generalized additive modelling revealed that vertebrate scavenging peaked in the winter season and summer independent of carrion supply. Still, different scavenger species showed different temporal patterns. While wild boar as ungulate omnivores did not display any seasonal patterns, avian scavengers showed significant variation in visitation rates. The mesopredator red fox consumed carrion significantly more often from late winter to summer, while pine marten was present at carrion only during winter. Finally, the specialist large carnivore Eurasian lynx, visited carrion sites most frequently in late winter and early spring. Our results suggest that global warming might impact some groups of vertebrate scavengers more strongly than others by reducing carrion availability in late winter, while returning carnivores could mitigate these impacts},
organization = {Funding for this study was provided by the Bavarian Forest National Park.
The authors would like to thank Martin Gahbauer, Maik Henrich, Christian Fiderer and Selina Groβe for their contribution to the data preparation used for the analysis in this study. We acknowledge support by the Open Access Publication Fund of the University of Freiburg},
publisher = {Elsevier},
title = {Seasonal variability of scavenger visitations is independent of carrion predictability},
doi = {10.1016/j.baae.2024.05.005},
author = {Pelsmaeker, Nicolas de and Ferry, Nicolas and Stiegler, Jonas and Selva Fernández, Nuria and Hoermann, Christian von and Müller, Jorg and Heurich, Marco},
}