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的数量和行为的级联效应的能力仍然非常差。大型食肉动物可以通过杀戮和恐吓来减少小型食肉动物的数量，但大型食肉动物也可以为一些小型食肉动物提供方便的食物，即被大型食肉动物杀死的动物尸体上留下的腐肉。提高对大型食肉动物在生态系统中的作用的理解是至关重要的，因为食肉动物分布的快速变化正在给全世界的社会带来前所未有的挑战。本研究将在一个综合的框架内研究食肉动物物种之间的积极和消极关系，为在不断变化的世界中改善食肉动物的保护和管理提供新的见解。这项研究将被纳入每年有150名学生参加的野生动物课程，通过使用尸体现场的照片创建新的探究性实验室。此外，这项研究将与阿拉斯加本土科学与工程项目合作，让阿拉斯加本土学生参与实地和实验室研究，并与Symbio工作室合作，每年为200万K-12学生制作有关食肉动物生态学的视频短片，为期5-7年。这项研究将检查两种常见的中掠食者，土狼和山猫的运动和种群动态，作为华盛顿北部狼，美洲狮，鹿和麋鹿的新合作研究的一部分。狼自然地重新在华盛顿定居，在大型食肉动物的存在中创造了一个多样化的马赛克。动物传播的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用于联合研究食肉动物之间的积极和消极关系。研究人员假设，食腐是决定中掠食者死亡风险的一个关键但被忽视的因素，在整个景观中创造了负面物种相互作用的热点。因此，腐肉可能呈现出一种“致命的吸引力”，即局部规模的竞争食肉动物聚集导致景观规模的次级中掠食者受到抑制。土狼和山猫将被用来验证这一假设，因为它们在食腐活动上有很大的不同，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.