Hog badger (Arctonyx collaris) latrine use in relation to food abundance: evidence of the scarce factor paradox

Ecosphere

Yayoi Kaneko¹  Caiai Nie²  Mingxi Xiang²  Zongqiang Xie³  Youbing Zhou³  Wenwen Chen³  David W. Macdonald⁴  Chris Newman⁴  Christina D. Buesching⁴ 

[1] Carnivore Ecology and Conservation Research Group, Division of Ecosciences, Institute of Agriculture, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Saiwaicho 3-5-8, Fuchu-city, Tokyo 183-8509 Japan;Management Bureau of Houhe National Nature Reserve, Hubei Province 443400 China;State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093 China;Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, The Recanati-Kaplan Centre, Tubney House, Tubney, Abingdon OX13 5QL United Kingdom;

关键词: Arctonyx collaris;    China;    diet;    foraging;    latrine;    mustelid;   

DOI  :  10.1890/ES14-00155.1

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Many carnivores use latrines, and investigations of latrine use have typically been concerned with territorial defense, often at the expense of fully evaluating other, not mutually exclusive, functions. In particular, the relationship between food abundance and latrine use patterns has been explored inadequately, where latrine location may be used to aid spatial memory, to stake a claim on access to temporally variable food resources, or to signal the local depletion of resources. Little is known about the hog badger (Arctonyx collaris), however the consensus is that they are solitary, but nonetheless deposit their feces in latrines, but without any group‐territory defense function. This provides an ideal study system to investigate how temporal and spatial variation in latrine use strategy is associated with food resource availability throughout the year. We use generalized linear mixed models (GLMM) and an information‐theoretic approach to test the hypothesis that seasonal latrine use patterns signal the resources most valued (i.e., the foraging book keeping hypothesis). We found that latrine use showed significant seasonal and habitat‐related variations, where the number of feces per latrine reached seasonal maxima in early summer but was lowest in autumn, and was significantly higher in logged forest and selectively logged forest but lowest in farmland. The intensity of latrine use exhibited a significant negative relationship with environmental food abundance, and was related to dietary output (fecal contents). That is, hog badgers invested most in ‘marking' those more limited resources, concurring with the scarce factor paradox, which asserts that the value of any commodity is a function of its rarity.

【 授权许可】

Unknown