Department of Biology, University of Florence, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy.
MUSE - Science Museum of Trento, Trento, Italy.
Ecol Appl. 2022 Oct;32(7):e2644. doi: 10.1002/eap.2644. Epub 2022 Jun 23.
Mammalian communities inhabiting temperate grasslands are of conservation concern globally, especially in Central Asia, where livestock numbers have dramatically increased in recent decades, leading to overgrazing and land-use change. Yet, how this pervasive presence of livestock herds affects the community of wild mammals remains largely unstudied. We used systematic camera trapping at 216 sites across remote, mountainous areas of the Mongolian Altai Mountains to assess the spatial and temporal patterns of occurrence and the interspecific relationships within a mammalian community that includes different categories of livestock. By adopting a recently proposed multispecies occupancy model that incorporates interspecific correlation in occupancy, we found several statistically strong correlations in occupancy among species pairs, with the majority involving livestock. The sign of such associations was markedly species-dependent, with larger wild species of conservation concern, namely, snow leopard and Siberian ibex, avoiding livestock presence. As predicted, we found evidence of a positive correlation in occupancy between predators and their respective main prey. Contrary to our expectations, a number of intraguild species pairs also showed positive co-occurrence, with no evidence of spatiotemporal niche partitioning. Overall, our study suggests that livestock encroaching into protected areas influences the whole local community of wild mammals. Though pastoralism has coexisted with wildlife for millennia in central Asian grasslands, our findings suggest that policies and practices to decrease the pressure of livestock husbandry on wildlife are needed, with special attention on large species, such as the snow leopard and its wild prey, which seem to be particularly sensitive to this pervasive livestock presence.
哺乳动物群落栖息在温带草原，这在全球范围内都引起了保护关注，尤其是在中亚地区，近几十年来，牲畜数量急剧增加，导致过度放牧和土地利用变化。然而，这种普遍存在的牲畜群体如何影响野生动物群落，在很大程度上仍未得到研究。我们在蒙古阿尔泰山偏远山区的 216 个地点使用系统相机陷阱，评估了一个包括不同类别牲畜的哺乳动物群落的出现时空模式和种间关系。通过采用最近提出的多物种占有模型，该模型将种间相关性纳入占有模型，我们发现物种对之间的占有存在几种统计学上显著的相关性，其中大多数涉及牲畜。这种关联的迹象明显取决于物种，受到保护的大型野生动物，如雪豹和西伯利亚野山羊，会避开牲畜的存在。正如预测的那样，我们发现了捕食者与其主要猎物之间的占有存在正相关的证据。与我们的预期相反，一些种内种间对也表现出正的共存，没有时空生态位分化的证据。总的来说，我们的研究表明，牲畜侵入保护区会影响当地的整个野生动物群落。尽管游牧业在中亚草原上与野生动物共存了几千年，但我们的研究结果表明，需要采取减少畜牧业对野生动物压力的政策和实践，特别要关注雪豹和其野生猎物等大型物种，因为它们似乎对这种普遍存在的牲畜特别敏感。
