Department of Plant, Food and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Agriculture, Dalhousie University, Truro, Nova Scotia, Canada.
School of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, New South Wales, Australia.
PLoS One. 2022 Jun 3;17(6):e0268520. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0268520. eCollection 2022.
Most natural ecosystems contain animals feeding on many different types of food, but it is difficult to predict what will be eaten when food availabilities change. We present a method that estimates food preference over many study sites, even when number of food types vary widely from site to site. Sampling variation is estimated using bootstrapping. We test the precision and accuracy of this method using computer simulations that show the effects of overall number of food types, number of sites, and proportion of missing prey items per site. Accuracy is greater with fewer missing prey types, more prey types and more sites, and is affected by the number of sites more than the number of prey types. We present a case study using lion (Panthera leo) feeding data and show that preference vs prey size follows a bell-curve. Using just two estimated parameters, this curve can be used as a general way to describe predator feeding patterns. Our method can be used to: test hypotheses about what factors affect prey selection, predict preferences in new sites, and estimate overall prey consumed in new sites.
大多数自然生态系统都包含以多种不同类型食物为食的动物，但很难预测当食物可利用性发生变化时会吃什么。我们提出了一种方法，可以在许多研究地点估计食物偏好，即使食物类型的数量在不同地点差异很大。使用自举法估计抽样变异。我们使用计算机模拟测试了这种方法的精度和准确性，这些模拟显示了总体食物类型数量、地点数量以及每个地点缺少猎物数量的比例的影响。准确性随着缺少的猎物类型、猎物类型和地点数量的减少而增加，并且受地点数量的影响大于猎物类型的数量。我们使用狮子（ Panthera leo ）的摄食数据进行了案例研究，结果表明，摄食偏好与猎物大小呈钟形曲线。使用仅两个估计参数，该曲线可以用作描述捕食者摄食模式的一般方法。我们的方法可用于：检验影响猎物选择的因素的假设，预测新地点的偏好，以及估计新地点的总猎物消耗量。
