期刊
POPULATION ECOLOGY
卷 54, 期 4, 页码 521-532出版社
WILEY
DOI: 10.1007/s10144-012-0326-5
关键词
Competitive exclusion; Exploitative competition; Pine marten; Range expansion; Red fox; Stone marten
类别
资金
- River Po Park (Vercelli province)
- River Po Park (Alessandria province)
- Basque Government through the Research group on Systematics, Biogeography and Population Dynamics [IT317-10, GIC10/76]
- Dept. of Education Universities and Research of the Basque Government [BFI09.396]
The stone marten (Martes foina) and the pine marten (M. martes) are closely related mammalian carnivores potentially subject to exploitative competition. The recent expansion of the pine marten into the intensively cultivated plain of the River Po (NW Italy), where previously only stone marten occurred, offered an interesting opportunity to analyse their relationships. We studied the distribution and diet of Martes species and trophic niche overlap between martens and red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) in two study areas, each with two pseudoreplicates, by analysing genotyped faeces. Our results seem to confirm the displacement of the stone marten from one study area, the pine marten being the only Martes species occurring where previously the stone marten had been reported. We found a large food niche overlap between red fox and both stone and pine martens, but with evidence of size-related differences in the consumption of some food items. We hypothesised that, due to the poor prey-base of the environment, highly altered by intensive crop cultivation, intense interspecific competition originally occurred between the red fox and stone marten. The heightening of interspecific competition caused by the entry of the pine marten in the predator guild may have caused the displacement of the stone marten, at least temporarily. The mechanism of such displacement needs to be clarified through further surveys in areas where the three species occur sympatrically.
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