CAREER: Integrating positive and negative interactions in carnivore community ecology

大型食肉动物是生态系统的关键组成部分，但科学家预测它们对其他物种丰度和行为的级联效应的能力仍然令人担忧。大型食肉动物可以通过杀戮和恐吓来减少较小的食肉动物物种的数量，但大型食肉动物也可以通过在大型食肉动物杀死的动物尸体上留下腐肉的形式为一些较小的食肉动物物种提供简单的食物。更好地了解大型食肉动物在生态系统中的作用至关重要，因为迅速变化的食肉动物分布正在给世界各地的社会带来前所未有的挑战。这项研究将在一个综合框架内研究食肉动物物种之间的积极和消极关系，提供新的见解，将改善食肉动物的保护和管理在不断变化的世界。这项研究将被纳入一个野生动物课程，每年有150名学生通过创建新的调查为基础的实验室使用的照片从尸体网站。此外，这项研究将涉及阿拉斯加原住民的学生在实地和实验室研究与阿拉斯加原住民科学和工程计划的合作伙伴关系，并有关食肉动物生态的视频小插曲将创建与Symbio工作室合作，以达到每年200万K-12学生5-7年。这项研究将检查两个常见的中型食肉动物，郊狼和山猫的运动和人口动态，这是对北方华盛顿的狼、美洲狮、鹿和麋鹿的一项新的合作研究的一部分。狼正在自然地重新占领华盛顿，在大型食肉动物的存在中创造了一个变异的马赛克。动物携带的GPS和视频跟踪技术、尸体的稳定同位素富集、粪便基因分型和杀戮地点的摄像机的强大组合将被用来共同研究食肉动物之间的积极和消极关系。研究人员假设，清除是一个关键但被忽视的因素，决定死亡风险的中型食肉动物，创造热点的负面物种相互作用的景观。腐肉可能因此提出了一个“致命的吸引力”，即当地规模集群的竞争食肉动物导致的牺牲规模的抑制下属中食动物。郊狼和山猫将被用来测试这一假设，因为它们在清除活性上有很大的不同，但在生态学上是相似的。

Large carnivores are key components of ecosystems, but the ability of scientists to predict their cascading effects on the abundance and behavior of other species remains alarmingly poor. Large carnivores can reduce populations of smaller carnivore species through killing and intimidation, but large carnivores may also benefit some smaller carnivore species by providing them with easy meals in the form of carrion left on carcasses of animals killed by large carnivores. An improved understanding of the role of large carnivores in ecosystems is critical, because rapidly changing carnivore distributions are creating unprecedented challenges to societies worldwide. This study will examine positive and negative relationships among carnivore species in an integrated framework, providing new insights that will improve carnivore conservation and management in a changing world. This research will be incorporated into a wildlife course with 150 students per year by creating new inquiry-based labs using photos from carcass sites. In addition, this study will involve Alaska Native students in field and lab research in partnership with the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program, and video vignettes about carnivore ecology will be created in partnership with Symbio Studios to reach 2 million K-12 students per year for 5-7 years.This study will examine the movements and population dynamics of two common mesopredators, coyotes and bobcats, as part of a new collaborative study of wolves, cougars, deer, and elk in northern Washington. Wolves are naturally recolonizing Washington, creating a mosaic of variation in large carnivore presence. A powerful combination of animal-borne GPS and video tracking technology, stable isotope enrichment of carcasses, fecal genotyping, and cameras at kill sites will be used to jointly examine positive and negative relationships among carnivores. The researcher hypothesizes that scavenging is a critical yet overlooked factor determining mortality risk for mesopredators, creating hotspots of negative species interactions across the landscape. Carrion may thus present a "fatal attraction" whereby local-scale clustering of competing carnivores leads to landscape-scale suppression of subordinate mesopredators. Coyotes and bobcats will be used to test this hypothesis, because they differ strongly in their scavenging activity but are otherwise ecologically similar.