Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T15:30:59.177Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Assessing the reliability of raptor pellets in recording local small mammal diversity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2021

Maria C. Viteri Open the ORCID record for Maria C. Viteri [Opens in a new window] ,
Mary Allison Stegner  and
Elizabeth A. Hadly
Maria C. Viteri*
Affiliation:
Department of Biology, Stanford University, 371 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
Mary Allison Stegner
Affiliation:
Department of Biology, Stanford University, 371 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
Elizabeth A. Hadly
Affiliation:
Department of Biology, Stanford University, 371 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
*
*Corresponding author email address: <[email protected]>
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Understanding how raptors select prey is important to determine taphonomic biases both in modern and paleo pellet assemblages. We tested whether pellets more closely represent raptor dietary specialization or local small mammal diversity by sampling pellets from seven raptor species across four study sites in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, USA. We identified small mammal craniodental elements from each pellet and tested for differences among small mammal assemblages for each raptor species and study site. We found that reconstructed avian predator diets clustered significantly by site but not by predator species. Bray-Curtis diet dissimilarities were also significantly lower when comparing different raptor species within a site than when comparing the same raptor species across different sites. Our results suggest that raptors choose to eat a diversity of small mammal species close to their roosts rather than fly long distances to specialize on a particular prey species. Neontologists and paleoecologists alike can therefore be confident that raptor pellets faithfully represent local small mammal diversity.

Keywords

Small mammalPaleoecologyRaptorPelletsCommunity ecologyOptimal foraging theoryYellowstone National Park
Type
Research Article
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 106 , March 2022 , pp. 1 - 10
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © University of Washington. Published by Cambridge University Press, 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Ahlmann-Eltze, C., 2019. ggsignif: significance brackets for ‘ggplot2’. R package version 0.6.0. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=ggsignif.Google Scholar
Alroy, J., 2010. Fair sampling of taxonomic richness and unbiased estimation of origination and extinction rates. The Paleontological Society Papers 16, 55–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andrews, P., Cook, J., 1990. Owls, Caves and Fossils: Predation, Preservation and Accumulation of Small Mammal Bones in Caves, with an Analysis of the Pleistocene Cave Faunas from Westbury-sub-Mendip, Somerset, UK. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Avery, D.M., 2002. Taphonomy of micromammals from cave deposits at Kabwe (Broken Hill) and Twin Rivers in Central Zambia. Journal of Archaeological Science 29, 537–544.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Balčiauskienė, L., 2005. Analysis of tawny owl (Strix aluco) food remains as a tool for long-term monitoring of small mammals. Acta Zoologica Lituanica 15, 85–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnosky, E.H., 1994. Ecosystem dynamics through the past 2000 years as revealed by fossil mammals from Lamar Cave in Yellowstone National Park, USA. Historical Biology 8, 71–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bedrosian, G., Watson, J., Steenhof, K., Kochert, M., Preston, C., Woodbridge, B. Williams, G., Keller, K., Crandall, R., 2017. Spatial and Temporal Patterns in Golden Eagle Diets in the Western United States, with Implications for Conservation Planning. Journal of Raptor Research 51, 347–367.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blois, J.L., McGuire, J.L., Hadly, E.A., 2010. Small mammal diversity loss in response to late-Pleistocene climatic change. Nature 465, 771–774.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Craighead, A.C.H., 2000. Pellet and Scat Analysis as Indicators of Past and Present Habitats. Master's thesis, Montana State University, Bozeman.Google Scholar
Davis, E.B., 2005. Mammalian beta diversity in the Great Basin, western USA: palaeontological data suggest deep origin of modern macroecological structure. Global Ecology and Biogeography 14, 479–490.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de la Peña, N.M., Butet, A., Delettre, Y., Paillat, G., Morant, P., Le Du, L., Burel, F., 2003. Response of the small mammal community to changes in western French agricultural landscapes. Landscape Ecology 18, 265–278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Despain, D.G., 1973. Vegetation of the Big Horn Mountains, Wyoming, in relation to substrate and climate. Ecological Monographs 43, 329–355.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duke, G.E., Evanson, O.A., Jegers, A., 1976. Meal to pellet intervals in 14 species of captive raptors. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part A: Physiology 53, 1–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Errington, P.L., 1930. The pellet analysis method of raptor food habits study. The Condor 32, 292–296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feranec, R.S., Hadly, E.A., Paytan, A., 2007. Determining landscape use of Holocene mammals using strontium isotopes. Oecologia 153, 943–950.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Foster, R.J., Harmsen, B.J., 2012. A critique of density estimation from camera-trap data. The Journal of Wildlife Management 76, 224–236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garnier, S., 2018. viridis: Default Color Maps from ‘matplotlib’. R package version 0.5.1. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=viridis.Google Scholar
Gerstell, A., Bednarz, J., 1999. Competition and patterns of resource use by two sympatric raptors. The Condor 101, 557–565.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Granjon, L., Traoré, M., 2007. Prey selection by barn owls in relation to small-mammal community and population structure in a Sahelian Agro-Ecosystem. Journal of Tropical Ecology 23, 199–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hadly, E.A., 1996. Influence of late-Holocene climate on northern Rocky Mountain mammals. Quaternary Research 46, 298–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hadly, E.A., 1999. Fidelity of terrestrial vertebrate fossils to a modern ecosystem. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 149, 389–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heisler, L.M., Somers, C.M., Poulin, R.G., 2016. Owl pellets: a more effective alternative to conventional trapping for broad-scale studies of small mammal communities. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 7, 96–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LANDFIRE, 2014. Existing Vegetation Type Layer, LANDFIRE 1.1.0. U.S. Department of the Interior, Geological Survey. Accessed 1 July 2020 at http://landfire.cr.usgs.gov/viewer/.Google Scholar
Lyman, R.L., Lyman, R.J., 2003. Lessons from temporal variation in the mammalian faunas from two collections of owl pellets in Columbia County, Washington. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 13, 150–156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marti, C.D., 1974. Feeding ecology of four sympatric owls. The Condor 76, 45–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matos, M., Alves, M., Pereira, M.R., Torres, I., Marques, S., Fonseca, C., 2015. Clear as daylight: analysis of diurnal raptor pellets for small mammal studies. Animal Biodiversity and Conservation 38, 37–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Farrell, M.J., Clark, W.A., Emmerson, F.H., Juarez, S.M., Kay, F.R., O'Farrell, T.M., Goodlett, T.Y., 1994. Use of a mesh live trap for small mammals: are results from Sherman live traps deceptive? Journal of Mammalogy 75, 692–699.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oksanen, J., Blanchet, F.G., Friendly, M., Kindt, R., Legendre, P., McGlinn, D., Minchin, P.R., O'Hara, R.B., Simpson, G.L., Solymos, P., 2019. vegan: Community Ecology Package. R package version 2.5–5.Google Scholar
R Core Team, 2019. R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. Vienna, Austria. Available at: https://www.R-project.org/.Google Scholar
Salamolard, M., Butet, A., Leroux, A., Bretagnolle, V., 2000. Responses of an avian predator to variations in prey density at a temperate latitude. Ecology 81, 2428–2441.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salazar, G., 2020. EcolUtils: Utilities for Community Ecology Analysis. R package version 0.1. https://github.com/GuillemSalazar/EcolUtils.Google Scholar
Scheibler, D.R., Christoff, A.U., 2007. Habitat associations of small mammals in southern Brazil and use of regurgitated pellets of birds of prey for inventorying a local fauna. Brazilian Journal of Biology, 67, 619–625.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shonfield, J., Bayne, E.M., 2019. Effects of industrial disturbance on abundance and activity of small mammals. Canadian Journal of Zoology 97, 1013–1020.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sikkink, P.G., 2011. Yellowstone sage belts 1958 to 2008: 50 years of change in the big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) communities of Yellowstone National Park. Natural Resources and Environmental Issues 17, 149–159. http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/nrei/vol17/iss1/19.Google Scholar
Stegner, M.A., 2015. Spatial and Temporal Variation in Mammalian Diversity of the Colorado Plateau (USA). Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Stegner, M.A., 2016. Stasis and change in Holocene small mammal diversity during a period of aridification in southeastern Utah. The Holocene 26, 1005–1019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stephens, R.B., Anderson, E.M., 2014. Effects of trap type on small mammal richness, diversity, and mortality. Wildlife Society Bulletin 38, 619–627.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Streubel, D., 1989. Small Mammals of the Yellowstone Ecosystem. Roberts Rinehart Inc., Boulder, Colorado.Google Scholar
Terry, R.C., 2007. Inferring predator identity from skeletal damage of small-mammal prey remains. Evolutionary Ecology Research 9, 199–219.Google Scholar
Terry, R.C., 2010a. On raptors and rodents: testing the ecological fidelity and spatiotemporal resolution of cave death assemblages. Paleobiology 36, 137–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Terry, R.C., 2010b. The dead do not lie: using skeletal remains for rapid assessment of historical small-mammal community baselines. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 277, 1193–1201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Torre, I., Arrizabalaga, A., Flaquer, C., 2004. Three methods for assessing richness and composition of small mammal communities. Journal of Mammalogy 85, 524–530.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Western Regional Climate Center, 2021. Climate Data Summaries. [Available online at: http://wrcc.dri.edu/climatedata/climsum/.]Google Scholar
Wickham, H. 2016. ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis. Springer-Verlag, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yom-Tov, Y., Wool, D., 1997. Do the contents of barn owl pellets accurately represent the proportion of prey species in the field? The Condor 99, 972–976.CrossRefGoogle Scholar