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Assessing the reliability of raptor pellets in recording local small mammal diversity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2021

Maria C. Viteri Open the ORCID record for Maria C. Viteri [Opens in a new window] ,
Mary Allison Stegner  and
Elizabeth A. Hadly
Maria C. Viteri*
Affiliation:
Department of Biology, Stanford University, 371 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
Mary Allison Stegner
Affiliation:
Department of Biology, Stanford University, 371 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
Elizabeth A. Hadly
Affiliation:
Department of Biology, Stanford University, 371 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
*
*Corresponding author email address: <mviteri@stanford.edu>
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Abstract

Understanding how raptors select prey is important to determine taphonomic biases both in modern and paleo pellet assemblages. We tested whether pellets more closely represent raptor dietary specialization or local small mammal diversity by sampling pellets from seven raptor species across four study sites in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, USA. We identified small mammal craniodental elements from each pellet and tested for differences among small mammal assemblages for each raptor species and study site. We found that reconstructed avian predator diets clustered significantly by site but not by predator species. Bray-Curtis diet dissimilarities were also significantly lower when comparing different raptor species within a site than when comparing the same raptor species across different sites. Our results suggest that raptors choose to eat a diversity of small mammal species close to their roosts rather than fly long distances to specialize on a particular prey species. Neontologists and paleoecologists alike can therefore be confident that raptor pellets faithfully represent local small mammal diversity.

Keywords

Small mammalPaleoecologyRaptorPelletsCommunity ecologyOptimal foraging theoryYellowstone National Park
Type
Research Article
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 106 , March 2022 , pp. 1 - 10
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Copyright
Copyright © University of Washington. Published by Cambridge University Press, 2021

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