A recipe for scavenging in vertebrates – the natural history of a behaviour

@article{Kane2017ARF,
  title={A recipe for scavenging in vertebrates – the natural history of a behaviour},
  author={Adam Kane and Kevin Healy and Thomas Guillerme and Graeme Douglas Ruxton and Andrew L. Jackson},
  journal={Ecography},
  year={2017},
  volume={40},
  pages={324–334}
}
Despite its prevalence, the importance of scavenging to carnivores is difficult to ascertain in modern day forms and impossible to study directly in extinct species. Yet, there are certain intrinsic and environmental features of a species that push it towards a scavenging lifestyle. These can be thought of as some of the principal parameters in optimal foraging theory namely, encounter rate and handling time. We use these components to highlight the morphologies and environments that would have… 

Figures from this paper

Human-Mediated Carrion: Effects on Ecological Processes

Carrion has shifted from a pulsed random resource from carcasses of wild animals, to a more predictable resource in its appearance at certain times and locations depending on human activities, mainly in industrialized countries with large human populations.

Effects of intraspecific competition and body mass on diet specialization in a mammalian scavenger

Abstract Animals that rely extensively on scavenging rather than hunting must exploit resources that are inherently patchy, dangerous, or subject to competition. Though it may be expected that

The Impact of Fisheries Discards on Scavengers in the Sea

It is challenging to identify how important discards might be to scavengers, as they are taxonomically diverse and vary in the role they play in scavenging interactions.

The zooarchaeology and paleoecology of early hominin scavenging

The zooarchaeological and modern ecological evidence for a possible scavenging niche among the earliest animal tissue‐consuming hominins (pre‐2.0 Ma) is reviewed, and some ways to explore answers to those questions with evidence from the archaeological record are outlined.

Nestling carcasses from colonially breeding wading birds: patterns of access and energetic relevance for a vertebrate scavenger community

It is indicated that fallen nestlings can serve as an important source of energy for scavengers at colonial breeding aggregations, particularly in oligotrophic systems.

Large home range scavengers support higher rates of carcass removal

The functional identity hypothesis is supported as a better framework for explaining carrion consumption rates than functional diversity or equivalence and the role of obligate scavengers and large carnivores as keystone species in terrestrial ecosystems is reinforced.

THE COMPOSITION AND INTERACTIONS OF SCAVENGERS ON A HUMPBACK WHALE CARCASS IN ALASKA

Abstract Many avian and mammalian predators are facultative scavengers and will opportunistically forage from carcasses. A food source as large as a whale carcass could be valuable to wildlife

A comparative analysis of the behavioral response to fishing boats in two albatross species

It is hypothesized that Anthropogenic food sources enhance aggregations of large numbers of individuals and species, but are not necessarily exploited by all individuals encountering them, or not to the same extent.

Not avian but mammalian scavengers efficiently consume carcasses under heavy snowfall conditions: a case from northern Japan

The first evaluation of scavenging processes in an ecosystem with heavy snow, located in northern Japan, which is characterized by the limitations of visual and odor cues to detect carcasses, implies that large snow piles significantly prevent avian scavengers from detecting carcasses.

Effect of scavenging on predation in a food web

Abstract Scavenging can have important consequences for food web dynamics, for example, it may support additional consumer species and affect predation on live prey. Still, few food web models

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 144 REFERENCES

Scavenging by vertebrates: behavioral, ecological, and evolutionary perspectives on an important energy transfer pathway in terrestrial ecosystems

A deeper understanding of carrion use by facultative scavengers will improve knowledge of community and ecosystem processes, especially the flow of energy through food webs.

Scavenging: how carnivores and carrion structure communities.

Energetic feasibility of an obligate marine scavenger

It is concluded that an obligate scavenging fish seems entirely energetically feasible in aquatic ecosystems, and the model is conservative, in that its assumptions err on the side of making scavenging ener getically expensive and/or unrewarding.

Body Size as a Driver of Scavenging in Theropod Dinosaurs

It is shown that theropods between 27 and 1,044 kg would have gained a significant energetic advantage over individuals at both the small and large extremes of theropod body mass through their scavenging efficiency.

New actualistic data on the ecology and energetics of hominin scavenging opportunities.

  • B. Pobiner
  • Environmental Science
    Journal of human evolution
  • 2015

Hunting and Scavenging by Early Humans: The State of the Debate

During the last 25 years, there has been a shift towards the belief that early humans were scavengers instead of hunters. This revisionist interpretation has brought a reconciliation with the

White Sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) Scavenging on Whales and Its Potential Role in Further Shaping the Ecology of an Apex Predator

It is proposed that white shark scavenging on whales may represent an underestimated, yet significant component to the overall foraging ecology of this species, especially as individuals attain sexual maturity.

Intra-guild competition and its implications for one of the biggest terrestrial predators, Tyrannosaurus rex

The results suggest that T. rex and other extremely large carnivorous dinosaurs would have been unable to compete as obligate scavengers and would have primarily hunted large vertebrate prey, similar to many large mammalian carnivores in modern-day ecosystems.

Facultative predation and scavenging by mammalian carnivores: seasonal, regional and intra‐guild comparisons

This work explores how mammalian carnivores cope with seasonality in carrion supply and in prey vulnerability to predation, and focuses mainly on large carnivores and ungulates, and compares especially ecological communities in northern temperate and African savanna ecosystems.

Searching speeds and the energetic feasibility of an obligate whale-scavenging fish

...