Scavenger community structure along an environmental gradient from boreal forest to alpine tundra in Scandinavia.

ABSTRACT: Scavengers can have strong impacts on food webs, and awareness of their role in ecosystems has increased during the last decades. In our study, we used baited camera traps to quantify the structure of the winter scavenger community in central Scandinavia across a forest-alpine continuum and assess how climatic conditions affected spatial patterns of species occurrences at baits. Canonical correspondence analysis revealed that the main habitat type (forest or alpine tundra) and snow depth was main determinants of the community structure. According to a joint species distribution model within the HMSC framework, species richness tended to be higher in forest than in alpine tundra habitat, but was only weakly associated with temperature and snow depth. However, we observed stronger and more d

SUBMITTER: Gomo G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7713988 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature