Spatial Co-Occurrence and Activity Patterns of Mesocarnivores in the Temperate Forests of Southwest China.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the interactions between species and their coexistence mechanisms will help explain biodiversity maintenance and enable managers to make sound conservation decisions. Mesocarnivores are abundant and diverse mid-sized carnivores and can have profound impacts on the function, structure and dynamics of ecosystem after the extirpation of apex predators in many ecosystems. The moist temperate forests of Southwest China harbor a diverse community of mesocarnivores in the absence of apex predators. Sympatric species tend to partition limited resources along time, diet and space to facilitate coexistence. We determined the spatial and temporal patterns for five species of mesocarnivores. We used detection histories from a large camera-trap dataset collected from 2004-2015 with an ext

SUBMITTER: Bu H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5056745 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature