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Ecological drivers of guanaco recruitment: variable carrying capacity and density dependence

  • Population ecology - Original research
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Abstract

Ungulates living in predator-free reserves offer the opportunity to study the influence of food limitation on population dynamics without the potentially confounding effects of top-down regulation or livestock competition. We assessed the influence of relative forage availability and population density on guanaco recruitment in two predator-free reserves in eastern Patagonia, with contrasting scenarios of population density. We also explored the relative contribution of the observed recruitment to population growth using a deterministic linear model to test the assumption that the studied populations were closed units. The observed densities increased twice as fast as our theoretical populations, indicating that marked immigration has taken place during the recovery phase experienced by both populations, thus we rejected the closed-population assumption. Regarding the factors driving variation in recruitment, in the low- to medium-density setting, we found a positive linear relationship between recruitment and surrogates of annual primary production, whereas no density dependence was detected. In contrast, in the high-density scenario, both annual primary production and population density showed marked effects, indicating a positive relationship between recruitment and per capita food availability above a food-limitation threshold. Our results support the idea that environmental carrying capacity fluctuates in response to climatic variation, and that these fluctuations have relevant consequences for herbivore dynamics, such as amplifying density dependence in drier years. We conclude that including the coupling between environmental variability in resources and density dependence is crucial to model ungulate population dynamics; to overlook temporal changes in carrying capacity may even mask density dependence as well as other important processes.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Andrés Johnson, Marcela Nabte, Victoria Rodriguez, Virginia Burgi, Alejo Irigoyen, Laura Lamuedra, Gustavo Pazos, Cynthia Fernández, Esteban Bremen, Cristian Pertersen, Lucas Andreani, Rafael Lorenzo, Lucía Castillo and Isaí Madriz for their support during field work; Sebastián Cévoli for his pioneering work at Cabo Dos Bahías; Martín García-Asorey for his help with data analysis; three anonymous reviewers who considerably improved the manuscript; Alejandro Arias and the Fundación Vida Silvestre Argentina, Centro Nacional Patagónico and Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas for logistic support. Field work at Cabo Dos Bahías during the 2001–2006 period was supported by the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Dirección de Áreas Protegidas de la Provincia de Chubut. Field work since 2006 was possible thanks to the financial support provided by the Rufford Small Grant Foundation and HSBC. Fieldwork permits were granted by the Dirección de Conservación y Áreas Protegidas y Dirección de Flora y Fauna de la Provincia de Chubut.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro Nacional Patagónico-CONICET, B. Brown 2915, U 9120 ACF, Puerto Madryn, Chubut, Argentina

    Andrea Marino, Miguel Pascual & Ricardo Baldi

  2. Patagonian and Andean Steppe Program, Wildlife Conservation Society, Neuquén, Argentina

    Ricardo Baldi

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  1. Andrea Marino
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  2. Miguel Pascual
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  3. Ricardo Baldi
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Correspondence to Andrea Marino.

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Communicated by Jean-Michel Gaillard.

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Marino, A., Pascual, M. & Baldi, R. Ecological drivers of guanaco recruitment: variable carrying capacity and density dependence. Oecologia 175, 1189–1200 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-014-2965-z

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