Twining Joshua P, Bernard Henry, Ewers Robert M
Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom.
Institute for Tropical Biology and Conservation, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia.
PLoS One. 2017 May 11;12(5):e0177143. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0177143. eCollection 2017.
Human land use is continuously altering the natural environment, yet the greater ecological implications of this change for many groups that are key to healthy ecosystem functioning remains uncharacterised in the tropics. Terrestrial scavenging vertebrates are one such group, providing integral ecosystem services through the removal of carrion which is a crucial component of both nutrient cycling and disease dynamics. To explore how anthropogenic processes may affect forest scavengers, we investigated the changes in the relative occupancy of two important terrestrial scavengers along a gradient of land use intensity, ranging from protected forest to oil palm plantation in Borneo. We found the Malay civet (Viverra tangalunga) had highest, albeit variable, occupancy in areas of low land use intensity and the Southeast Asian water monitor (Varanus salvator macromaculatus) had highest occupancy in areas of high land use intensity. Land use had no effect on the combined occupancy of the two species. In high land use intensity sites, individual water monitors were larger and had better body condition, but at population level had a highly biased sex ratio with more males than females and increased signs of intraspecific conflict. We did not assess scavenging rate or efficiency as a process, but the high occupancy rates and apparent health of the scavengers in high land use intensity landscapes suggests this ecological process is robust to land use change.
人类土地利用不断改变自然环境，但在热带地区，这种变化对许多对健康生态系统功能至关重要的群体所产生的更大生态影响仍未得到描述。陆地食腐脊椎动物就是这样一个群体，它们通过清除腐肉提供不可或缺的生态系统服务，而腐肉是营养循环和疾病动态的关键组成部分。为了探究人为过程如何影响森林食腐动物，我们沿着土地利用强度梯度，从婆罗洲的保护森林到油棕种植园，调查了两种重要陆地食腐动物的相对占有率变化。我们发现，马来麝猫（Viverra tangalunga）在土地利用强度低的地区占有率最高，尽管有所变化，而东南亚水巨蜥（Varanus salvator macromaculatus）在土地利用强度高的地区占有率最高。土地利用对这两个物种的综合占有率没有影响。在土地利用强度高的地点，个体水巨蜥体型更大，身体状况更好，但在种群水平上，性别比例严重失衡，雄性多于雌性，种内冲突迹象增加。我们没有将食腐率或效率作为一个过程进行评估，但在土地利用强度高的景观中，食腐动物的高占有率和明显健康状况表明，这一生态过程对土地利用变化具有较强的适应性。
