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丰度和行为的连锁影响的能力仍然令人震惊。大型肉食动物可以通过杀戮和恐吓来减少较小肉食物种的数量，但大型肉食动物也可能受益于一些较小的肉食物种，因为它们可以通过提供被大型肉食动物杀死的动物身体上留下的腐肉形式的容易食物而受益。更好地了解大型食肉动物在生态系统中的作用至关重要，因为快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，以在不断变化的世界中改善食肉动物的保护和管理。这项研究将被纳入一门每年有150名学生参加的野生动物课程，方法是利用身体现场的照片创建新的探究式实验室。此外，这项研究将让阿拉斯加原住民学生参与与阿拉斯加原住民科学与工程计划合作的野外和实验室研究，并将与塞姆比奥工作室合作创建关于食肉动物生态的视频片段，以在5-7年内每年接触200万名K-12学生。作为华盛顿北部一项新的合作研究的一部分，这项研究将研究两种常见的中食肉动物--郊狼和山猫的迁徙和种群动态。狼群正在自然而然地重新殖民华盛顿，在大型食肉动物的存在上创造了一种马赛克式的变异。动物携带的GPS和视频跟踪技术、身体的稳定同位素浓缩、粪便基因分型和捕杀地点的摄像头的强大组合将被用于联合检查食肉动物之间的积极和消极关系。研究人员假设，觅食是决定中栖食肉动物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物种互动的热点。因此，腐肉可能会带来一种“致命的吸引力”，在这种情况下，相互竞争的食肉动物在局部范围内聚集，会导致地貌范围内对从属的中食肉动物的抑制。郊狼和山猫将被用来检验这一假说，因为它们在拾取食物的活动上有很大的不同，但在其他方面生态上是相似的。

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.