Riding the wetland wave: Can ducks locate macroinvertebrate resources across the breeding season?

ABSTRACT: Food availability varies considerably over space and time in wetland systems, and consumers must be able to track those changes during energetically-demanding points in the life cycle like breeding. Resource tracking has been studied frequently among herbivores, but receives less attention among consumers of macroinvertebrates. We evaluated the change in resource availability across habitat types and time and the simultaneous density of waterfowl consumers throughout their breeding season in a high-elevation, flood-irrigated system. We also assessed whether the macroinvertebrate resource density better predicted waterfowl density across habitats, compared to consistency (i.e., temporal evenness) of the invertebrate resource or taxonomic richness. Resource density varied marginally across w

SUBMITTER: Setash CM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11199343 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature