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Rodent species richness is correlated with carnivore species richness in Spain

G. Moreno-Rueda,M. Pizarro

Published 2010 in Revue de Ecologie-La Terre et la Vie

ABSTRACT

The diversity of ecological niches favours species coexistence, increasing species richness. Therefore, carnivore species richness should increase with prey species richness, as this represents more trophic niches for carnivores. We evaluated this hypothesis with data from peninsular Spain, by using General Linear Models. We controlled for five alternative explanations for such a relationship: climate, human activity, spatial autocorrelation, habitat heterogeneity, and spurious chance, which might prompt a positive correlation between carnivore and rodent species richness (its main prey). Results show that rodent species richness was positively correlated with carnivore species richness (r = 0.62). The correlation between carnivore species richness and rodent species richness was not caused by climate, human activity, spatial autocorrelation or habitat heterogeneity. Together, these factors explained 13.6 % of variation in carnivore species richness, while rodent species richness alone explained 26.2 % of variation (50.4 % of explained variance). Moreover, carnivore species richness was more correlated with rodent species richness than with 28 other vertebrate taxa, with a probability of 0.034 of this being by chance. In conclusion, this study presents evidence that higher prey species richness may promote higher carnivore species richness. The conservation of prey diversity, thus, may contribute to the conservation of carnivores

PUBLICATION RECORD

  • Publication year

    2010

  • Venue

    Revue de Ecologie-La Terre et la Vie

  • Publication date

    Unknown publication date

  • Fields of study

    Biology, Environmental Science

  • Identifiers
    DOI 10.3406/revec.2010.1531
  • External record

    Open on Semantic Scholar

  • Source metadata

    Semantic Scholar

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