Can landscape heterogeneity promote carnivore coexistence in human-dominated landscapes?
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Can landscape heterogeneity promote carnivore coexistence in human-dominated landscapes? Philip J. Manlick
. Steve K. Windels . James E. Woodford . Jonathan N. Pauli
Received: 28 January 2019 / Accepted: 16 July 2020 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Context Interspecific competition can limit species distributions unless competitors partition niche space to enable coexistence. Landscape heterogeneity can facilitate niche partitioning and enable coexistence, but land-use change is restructuring terrestrial ecosystems globally with unknown consequences for species interactions. Objectives We tested the relationship between landscape heterogeneity and carnivore co-occurrence in
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-020-01077-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. P. J. Manlick (&) J. N. Pauli Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1630 Linden Dr., Madison, WI 53706, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Present Address: P. J. Manlick Biology Department, University of New Mexico, 219 Yale Blvd NE, Albuquerque, NM 87171, USA S. K. Windels National Park Service, Voyageurs National Park, 360 Highway 11 East, International Falls, MN 56649, USA J. E. Woodford Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Bureau of Natural Heritage Conservation, 107 Sutliff Avenue, Rhinelander, WI 54501, USA
natural and human-dominated ecosystems to assess the landscape-mediated impacts of anthropogenic change on coexistence. Methods We used boosted regression trees to model the distributions and co-occurrence of two competing forest carnivores, American martens and fishers, at two contrasting sites in the Great Lakes region, USA: a ‘‘natural’’ site largely devoid of human impacts and a ‘‘human-dominated’’ site with substantial development and a history of land-use change. We assessed the importance of climate and habitat variables for each species, measured spatial niche overlap, and quantified co-occurrence as a function of compositional (patch richness), configurational (landscape shape), and topographical (elevation range) heterogeneity per site. Results We observed significant differences in the effect of heterogeneity on co-occurrence between sites. The natural landscape exhibited little niche overlap and co-occurrence had a significant, positive relationship with heterogeneity. Conversely, the human-dominated site exhibited high niche overlap with variable effects of heterogeneity on co-occurrence. Elevation, snowpack, and development had strong, contrasting effects on marten and fisher distributions, suggesting that differential use of habitat and anthropogenic features facilitates coexistence. Conclusions Heterogeneity can facilitate coexistence, but too much may undermine carnivore coexistence in human-dominated landscapes where habitat
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Landscape Ecol
and space are limited. Moreover, future climate change wi
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