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Whitworth A, Beirne C, Basto A, Flatt E, Tobler M, Powell G, Terborgh J, Forsyth A. Disappearance of an ecosystem engineer, the white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari), leads to density compensation and ecological release. Oecologia 2022; 199:937-949. [PMID: 35963917 PMCID: PMC9464176 DOI: 10.1007/s00442-022-05233-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/26/2021] [Accepted: 07/25/2022] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Given the rate of biodiversity loss, there is an urgent need to understand community-level responses to extirpation events, with two prevailing hypotheses. On one hand, the loss of an apex predator leads to an increase in primary prey species, triggering a trophic cascade of other changes within the community, while density compensation and ecological release can occur because of reduced competition for resources and absence of direct aggression. White-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari—WLP), a species that typically co-occurs with collared peccary (Pecari tajacu), undergo major population crashes—often taking 20 to 30-years for populations to recover. Using a temporally replicated camera trapping dataset, in both a pre- and post- WLP crash, we explore how WLP disappearance alters the structure of a Neotropical vertebrate community with findings indicative of density compensation. White-lipped peccary were the most frequently detected terrestrial mammal in the 2006–2007 pre-population crash period but were undetected during the 2019 post-crash survey. Panthera onca (jaguar) camera trap encounter rates declined by 63% following the WLP crash, while collared peccary, puma (Puma concolor), red-brocket deer (Mazama americana) and short-eared dog (Atelocynus microtis) all displayed greater encounter rates (490%, 150%, 280%, and 500% respectively), and increased in rank-abundance. Absence of WLP was correlated with ecological release changes in habitat-use for six species, with the greatest increase in use in the preferred floodplain habitat of the WLP. Surprisingly, community-weighted mean trait distributions (body size, feeding guild and nocturnality) did not change, suggesting functional redundancy in diverse tropical mammal assemblages.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrew Whitworth
- Osa Conservation, Washington, DC, USA. .,Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine, College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, UK. .,Department of Biology, Center for Energy, Environment, and Sustainability, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, USA.
| | - Christopher Beirne
- Department of Forest Resources Management, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
| | - Arianna Basto
- Osa Conservation, Washington, DC, USA.,Conservación Amazónica, Lima, Perú.,Human Dimensions of Natural Resources, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA
| | | | | | | | - John Terborgh
- Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
| | - Adrian Forsyth
- Osa Conservation, Washington, DC, USA.,Andes Amazon Fund, Washington, DC, USA
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