Méndez Diego, Vargas Félix Hernán, Sarasola José Hernán, Olea Pedro P
Departamento de Ecología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Calle Darwin 2, Madrid 28049, Spain.
Aves Rapaces en Bolivia - Programa de Investigación. Calle El Villar 369, Sucre, Bolivia.
R Soc Open Sci. 2024 Jul 31;11(7):240409. doi: 10.1098/rsos.240409. eCollection 2024 Jul.
Vultures provide the key ecosystem service of quickly removing carrion, so they have recently been assumed to be top scavengers. To challenge the concept of top scavenger (i.e. the most influential in the scavenging community and process), between 2012 and 2019, we recorded the consumption of 45 equine carcasses available for two different avian scavenger guilds in the Tropical Andes; each guild included the Andean Condor, the alleged top scavenger. The carcasses eaten by Andean Condors were consumed, on average, 1.75 times faster than those they did not eat. Furthermore, the greater abundance of feeding condors shortened carcass consumption time more than a greater abundance of any other species by 1.65 to 5.96 times, on average. These findings support the hypothesis that the Andean Condor significantly drives scavenging dynamics and is, therefore, an unrestricted top scavenger. Additionally, we established a gradient of tolerance of avian scavengers to domestic dog disturbance at carcasses, from highest to lowest: vultures > caracaras > condors. Our study framework holds great potential for advancing in food webs' comprehension through quantifying the relative functional role of scavenging communities' members and for guiding efforts to weigh up the ecological contributions of top scavengers and foster their conservation.
秃鹫提供了快速清除腐肉这一关键的生态系统服务，因此它们最近被认为是顶级食腐动物。为了挑战顶级食腐动物的概念（即在食腐动物群落和过程中最具影响力的），在2012年至2019年期间，我们记录了热带安第斯山脉中可供两个不同鸟类食腐动物群体食用的45匹马的尸体的消耗情况；每个群体都包括安第斯神鹫，即所谓的顶级食腐动物。被安第斯神鹫吃掉的尸体，其被消耗的平均速度比未被吃掉的尸体快1.75倍。此外，食腐神鹫数量的增加比其他任何物种数量的增加更能缩短尸体的消耗时间，平均缩短1.65至5.96倍。这些发现支持了这样一种假设，即安第斯神鹫显著推动了食腐动态，因此是毫无争议的顶级食腐动物。此外，我们还确定了鸟类食腐动物对尸体处家犬干扰的耐受梯度，从高到低依次为：秃鹫＞卡拉卡拉鹰＞神鹫。我们的研究框架在通过量化食腐动物群落成员的相对功能作用来推进对食物网的理解以及指导权衡顶级食腐动物的生态贡献并促进其保护的努力方面具有巨大潜力。
