Insect abundance patterns on vertebrate remains reveal carrion resource quality variation.

ABSTRACT: Resource quality is a key driver of species abundance and community structure. Carrion is unique among resources due to its high nutritional quality, rapidly changing nature, and the diverse community of organisms it supports. Yet the role resource quality plays in driving variation in abundance patterns of carrion-associated species remains poorly studied. Here we investigate how species abundances change with a measure of resource change, and interpret these findings to determine how species differ in their association with carrion that changes in quality over time. We conducted field succession experiments using pigs and humans over two winters and one summer. We quantified the effect of total body score, an objective measure of resource change, on adult insect abundance using generalis

SUBMITTER: Dawson BM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9056491 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature