Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Can landscape heterogeneity promote carnivore coexistence in human-dominated landscapes?

  • Research Article
  • Published:
Landscape Ecology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Context

Interspecific competition can limit species distributions unless competitors partition niche space to enable coexistence. Landscape heterogeneity can facilitate niche partitioning and enable coexistence, but land-use change is restructuring terrestrial ecosystems globally with unknown consequences for species interactions.

Objectives

We tested the relationship between landscape heterogeneity and carnivore co-occurrence in natural and human-dominated ecosystems to assess the landscape-mediated impacts of anthropogenic change on coexistence.

Methods

We used boosted regression trees to model the distributions and co-occurrence of two competing forest carnivores, American martens and fishers, at two contrasting sites in the Great Lakes region, USA: a “natural” site largely devoid of human impacts and a “human-dominated” site with substantial development and a history of land-use change. We assessed the importance of climate and habitat variables for each species, measured spatial niche overlap, and quantified co-occurrence as a function of compositional (patch richness), configurational (landscape shape), and topographical (elevation range) heterogeneity per site.

Results

We observed significant differences in the effect of heterogeneity on co-occurrence between sites. The natural landscape exhibited little niche overlap and co-occurrence had a significant, positive relationship with heterogeneity. Conversely, the human-dominated site exhibited high niche overlap with variable effects of heterogeneity on co-occurrence. Elevation, snowpack, and development had strong, contrasting effects on marten and fisher distributions, suggesting that differential use of habitat and anthropogenic features facilitates coexistence.

Conclusions

Heterogeneity can facilitate coexistence, but too much may undermine carnivore coexistence in human-dominated landscapes where habitat and space are limited. Moreover, future climate change will likely erode niche partitioning among martens and fishers, with particularly strong consequences for coexistence in human-dominated landscapes and at range boundaries.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

Data accessibility

All data is archived in FigShare (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12724667).

References

  • Amarasekare P (2003) Competitive coexistence in spatially structured environments: a synthesis. Ecol Lett 6:1109–1122

    Google Scholar 

  • Bayne EM, Boutin S, Moses RA (2008) Ecological factors influencing the spatial pattern of Canada lynx relative to its southern range edge in Alberta, Canada. Can J Zool 86:1189–1197

    Google Scholar 

  • Bowers MA, Brown JH (1982) Body size and coexistnce in desert rodents: chance or community structure? Ecology 63:391–400

    Google Scholar 

  • Brown JH (1984) On the relationship between abundance and distribution of species. Am Nat 124:255–279

    Google Scholar 

  • Buskirk S, Powell R (1994) Habitat ecology of fishers and American martens. In: Buskirk S, Harestad A, Raphael M, Powell R (eds) Martens, Sables, and Fishers: Biology and Conservation. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, pp 283–296

    Google Scholar 

  • Cardille JA, Lambois M (2010) From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters: Human signature nearly ubiquitous in representative US landscapes. Front Ecol Environ 8:130–134

    Google Scholar 

  • Carroll C (2007) Interacting effects of climate change, landscape conversion, and harvest on carnivore populations at the range margin: marten and lynx in the northern Appalachians. Conserv Biol 21:1092–1104

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Channell R, Lomolino MV (2000) Dynamic biogeography and conservation of endangered species. Nature 403:84–86

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Chapron G, Kaczensky P, Linnell JDC, von Arx M, Huber D, Andrén H, López-bao JV, Adamec M (2014) Recovery of large carnivores in Europe’s modern human-dominated landscapes. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1257553

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Chase JM, Leibold MA (2003) Ecological niches: linking classical and contemporary approaches. University of Chicago Press

  • Chesson P (2000) Mechanisms of maintenance of species diversity. Annu Rev Ecol Syst 31:343–358

    Google Scholar 

  • Cruz P, Iezzi ME, De Angelo C, Varela D, Di Bitetti MS, Paviolo A (2018) Effects of human impacts on habitat use, activity patterns and ecological relationships among medium and small felids of the Atlantic Forest. PLoS ONE 13:1–21

    Google Scholar 

  • Darimont CT, Paquet PC, Reimchen TE (2009) Landscape heterogeneity and marine subsidy generate extensive intrapopulation niche diversity in a large terrestrial vertebrate. J Anim Ecol 78:126–133

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Donadio E, Buskirk SW (2006) Diet, morphology, and interspecific killing in carnivora. Am Nat 167:524–536

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Dumyahn J, Zollner P, Gilbert J (2007) Winter home-range characteristics of American marten (Martes americana) in northern Wisconsin. Am Midl Nat 158:382–394

    Google Scholar 

  • Durant SM (1998) Competition refuges and coexistence: an example from Serengeti carnivores. J Anim Ecol 67:370–386

    Google Scholar 

  • Elith J, Leathwick JR, Hastie T (2008) A working guide to boosted regression trees. J Anim Ecol 77:802–813

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Erb J (2015) Furbearer winter track survey summary, 2015. Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Forest Wildlife Research Group

  • Erlinge S, Sandell M (1988) Coexistence of stoat, Mustela erminea, and weasel, M. nivalis: social dominance, scent communication, reciprocal distribution. Oikos 53:242–246

    Google Scholar 

  • Fisher JT, Anholt B, Bradbury S, Wheatley M, Volpe JP (2013) Spatial segregation of sympatric marten and fishers: the influence of landscapes and species-scapes. Ecography (Cop) 36:240–248

    Google Scholar 

  • Fisher JT, Anholt B, Volpe JP (2011) Body mass explains characteristic scales of habitat selection in terrestrial mammals. Ecol Evol 1:517–528

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Fox J (2016) Polycor: polychoric and polyserial correlations. R package version 0.7–5.

  • Gámez-Virués S, Perović DJ, Gossner MM, Börschig C, Blüthgen N, de Jong H, Simons NK, Klein A-M, Krauss J, Maier G, Scherber C, Steckel J, Rothenwöhrer C, Steffan-Dewenter I, Weiner CN, Weisser W, Werner M, Tscharntke T, Westphal C (2015) Landscape simplification filters species traits and drives biotic homogenization. Nat Commun 6:8568

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Gesch D, Oimoen M, Greenlee S, Nelson C (2002) The national elevation dataset. Photogramm Eng Remote Sens 68:5–11

    Google Scholar 

  • Gese EM, Dowd JLB, Aubry LM (2013) The influence of snowmobile trails on coyote movements during winter in high-elevation landscapes. PLoS ONE 8:1–10

    Google Scholar 

  • Godsoe W (2014) Inferring the similarity of species distributions using Species’ Distribution Models. Ecography (Cop) 37:130–136

    Google Scholar 

  • Godsoe W, Case BS (2015) Accounting for shifts in the frequency of suitable environments when testing for niche overlap. Methods Ecol Evol 6:59–66

    Google Scholar 

  • Gonzalez-Abraham CE, Radeloff VC, Hammer RB, Hawbaker TJ, Stewart SI, Clayton MK (2007) Building patterns and landscape fragmentation in northern Wisconsin, USA. Landsc Ecol 22:217–230

    Google Scholar 

  • Goring S, Mladenoff DJ, Cogbill CV, Record S, Paciorek CJ, Jackson ST, Dietze M, Dawson A, Matthes J, McLachlan JS, Williams JW (2016) Changes in forest composition, stem density, and biomass from the settlement era (1800s) to present in the upper Midwestern United States. PLoS ONE 11:e0151935

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Goring SJ, Williams JW (2017) Effect of historical land-use and climate change on tree-climate relationships in the upper Midwestern United States. Ecol Lett 20:461–470

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hawbaker TJ, Radeloff VC, Clayton MK, Hammer RB, Gonzalez-Abraham CE (2006) Road development, housing growth, and landscape fragmentation in northern Wisconsin: 1937–1999. Ecol Appl 16:1222–1237

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hijmans RJ, Phillips S, Leathwick J, Elith J (2013) dismo: Species distribution modeling. R package version 0.9–3.

  • Hufkens K, Basler D, Milliman T, Melaas EK, Richardson AD (2018) An integrated phenology modelling framework in r. Methods Ecol Evol 9:1276–1285

    Google Scholar 

  • Joyce MJ, Erb JD, Sampson BA, Moen RA (2019) Detection of coarse woody debris using airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR). For Ecol Manag 433:678–689

    Google Scholar 

  • Kotler BP, Brown JS (1988) Environmental Heterogeneity and the Coexistence of Desert Rodents. Annu Rev Ecol Syst 19:281–307

    Google Scholar 

  • Krohn W, Elowe K, Boone R (1995) Relations among fishers, snow, and martens: development and evaluation of two hypotheses. For Chron 71:97–105

    Google Scholar 

  • Krohn W, Zielinski W, Boone R (1997) Relations among fishers, snow, and martens in California: results from small-scale spatial comparisons. In: Proulx G, Bryant H, Woodard P (eds) Martes: taxonomy, ecology, techniques and management. The Provincial Museum of Alberta, Edmonton, Edmonton, pp 211–232

    Google Scholar 

  • Lawler J, Safford H, Girvetz E (2012) Martens and fishers in a changing climate. In: Aubry K, Zielinski W, Raphael M, et al. (eds) Biology and conservation of martens, sables, and fishers: a new synthesis. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, pp 371–397

    Google Scholar 

  • Lawton J (1993) Range, population abundance and conservation. Trends Ecol Evol 8:409–413

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Letten AD, Ke PJ, Fukami T (2017) Linking modern coexistence theory and contemporary niche theory. Ecol Monogr 87:161–177

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewis JS, Bailey LL, Vandewoude S, Crooks KR (2015) Interspecific interactions between wild felids vary across scales and levels of urbanization. Ecol Evol 5:5946–5961

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Macarthur RH, Levins R (1964) Competition, habitat selection, and character displacement in a patchy environment. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 51:1207–1210

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Manlick PJ, Woodford JE, Gilbert JH, Eklund D, Pauli JN (2017a) Augmentation provides nominal genetic and demographic rescue for an endangered carnivore. Conserv Lett 10:178–185

    Google Scholar 

  • Manlick PJ, Woodford JE, Zuckerberg B, Pauli JN (2017b) Niche compression intensifies competition between reintroduced American martens (Martes americana) and fishers (Pekania pennanti). J Mamm 98:690–702

    Google Scholar 

  • Martin ME, Moriarty KM, Pauli JN (2020) Forest structure and snow depth alter the movement patterns and subsequent expenditures of a forest carnivore, the Pacific marten. Oikos 129:356–366

    Google Scholar 

  • McCann NP, Zollner PA, Gilbert JH (2010) Survival of adult martens in northern Wisconsin. J Wildl Manag 74:1502–1507

    Google Scholar 

  • McCann NP, Zollner PA, Gilbert JH (2014) Bias in the use of broadscale vegetation data in the analysis of habitat selection. J Mamm 95:369–381

    Google Scholar 

  • McCann NP, Zollner PA, Gilbert JH (2017a) Temporal scaling in analysis of animal activity. Ecography (Cop) 40:1436–1444

    Google Scholar 

  • McCann NP, Zollner PA, Gilbert JH (2017b) Classifying carnivore tracks using dimensions that control for snow conditions. Wildl Soc Bull 41:278–285

    Google Scholar 

  • McGarigal K, Cushman SA, Neel MC, Ene E (2002) FRAGSTATS: spatial pattern analysis program for categorical maps.

  • McKinney M, Lockwood J (1999) Biotic homogenization: a few winners replacing many losers in the next mass extinction. Trends Ecol Evol 14:450–453

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Menge JL, Menge BA (1974) Role of resource allocation, aggression and spatial heterogeneity in coexistence of two competing intertidal Starfish. Ecol Monogr 44:189–209

    Google Scholar 

  • Navarro LM, Pereira HM (2015) Rewilding abandoned landscapes in Europe. Rewilding European landscapes. Springer, Cham, pp 3–23

    Google Scholar 

  • Notaro M, Lorenz D, Hoving C, Schummer M (2014) Twenty-first-century projections of snowfall and winter severity across central-eastern North America. J Clim 27:6526–6550

    Google Scholar 

  • Notaro M, Lorenz DJ, Vimont D, Vavrus S, Kucharik C, Franz K (2010) 21st century Wisconsin snow projections based on an operational snow model driven by statistically downscaled climate data. Int J Climatol 31:1615–1633

    Google Scholar 

  • Oliver T, Hill JK, Thomas CD, Brereton T, Roy DB (2009) Changes in habitat specificity of species at their climatic range boundaries. Ecol Lett 12:1091–1102

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Palmer MW (1992) The coexistence of species in fractal landscapes. Am Nat 139:375–397

    Google Scholar 

  • Palmer TM (2003) Spatial habitat heterogeneity influences competition and coexistence in an African Acacia Ant Guild. Ecology 84:2843–2855

    Google Scholar 

  • Paulson AK, Sanders S, Kirschbaum J, Waller DM (2016) Post-settlement ecological changes in the forests of the Great Lakes National Parks. Ecosphere 7:1–20

    Google Scholar 

  • Peers MJL, Thornton DH, Murray DL (2013) Evidence for large-scale effects of competition: niche displacement in Canada lynx and bobcat. Proc R Soc B 280:20132495

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Perović D, Gámez-Virués S, Börschig C, Klein AM, Krauss J, Steckel J, Rothenwöhrer C, Erasmi S, Tscharntke T, Westphal C (2015) Configurational landscape heterogeneity shapes functional community composition of grassland butterflies. J Appl Ecol 52:505–513

    Google Scholar 

  • Peterson AT, Soberón J, Pearson RG, Anderson RP, Martínez-Meyer E, Nakamura M, Bastos Araujo M (2011) Ecological niches and geographic distributions. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ

    Google Scholar 

  • Pokallus JW, Pauli J (2015) Population dynamics of a northern-adapted mammal: disentangling the influence of predation and climate change. Ecol Appl 25:1546–1556

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Powell R, Lewis J, Slough B, Brainerd S, Jordan N, Abramov A, Monakhov V, Zollner P, Murakami T (2012) Evaluating translocations of martens, sables, and fishers. In: Aubry K, Zielinski W, Raphael M et al (eds) Biology and conservation of martens, sables, and fishers: a new synthesis. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, pp 93–137

    Google Scholar 

  • R Core Team (2019) R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. https://www.R-project.org/

  • Radeloff VC, Williams JW, Bateman BL, Burke KD, Childress ES, Cromwell KJ, Gratton C, Hasley AO, Kraemer M, Latzka AW, Marin-Spiotta E, Meine CD, Munoz SE, Neeson TM, Pidgeon AM, Rissman AR, Rivera RJ, Usinowicz J (2015) The rise of novelty in ecosystems. Ecol Appl 25:2051–2068

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rhemtulla JM, Mladenoff DJ, Clayton MK (2007) Regional land-cover conversion in the U.S. upper Midwest: magnitude of change and limited recovery (1850–1935–1993). Landsc Ecol 22:57–75

    Google Scholar 

  • Rhemtulla J, Mladenoff D, Clayton M (1930s) Legacies of historical land use on regional forest composition and structure in Wisconsin, USA (mid-1800s – 1930s–2000s). Ecol Appl 19:1061–1078

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Riiters K, Wickham J (2003) How far from the nearest road? Front Ecol Environ 1:125–129

    Google Scholar 

  • Ripple WJ, Estes JA, Beschta RL, Wilmers CC, Ritchie EG, Hebblewhite M, Berger J, Elmhagen B, Letnic M, Nelson MP, Schmitz OJ, Smith DW, Wallach AD, Wirsing AJ (2014) Status and ecological effects of the world’s largest carnivores. Science 343:1241484

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ripple WJ, Wirsing AJ, Beschta RL, Buskirk SW (2011) Can restoring wolves aid in lynx recovery? Wildl Soc Bull 35:514–518

    Google Scholar 

  • Robertson OJ, McAlpine C, House A, Maron M (2013) Influence of interspecific competition and landscape structure on spatial homogenization of avian assemblages. PLoS ONE 8:1–8

    Google Scholar 

  • Roebber PJ, Bruening SL, Schultz DM, Cortinas JV (2003) Improving snowfall forecasting by diagnosing snow density. Weather Forecast 18:264–287

    Google Scholar 

  • Ruggiero L, Aubry K, Buskirk S, Lyon L, Zielinski WJ (1994) American marten, Fisher, Lynx, and Wolverine in the Western United States. In: General technical report RM-254. Fort Collins, CO

  • Santulli G, Palazón S, Melero Y, Gosálbez J, Lambin X (2014) Multi-season occupancy analysis reveals large scale competitive exclusion of the critically endangered European mink by the invasive non-native American mink in Spain. Biol Conserv 176:21–29

    Google Scholar 

  • Schulte LA, Mladenoff DJ, Crow TR, Merrick LC, Cleland DT (2007) Homogenization of northern U.S. Great Lakes forests due to land use. Landsc Ecol 22:1105–1105

    Google Scholar 

  • Shirk A, Raphael M, Cushman S (2014) Spatiotemporal variation in resource selection: insights from the American marten (Martes americana). Ecol Appl 24:1434–1444

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Sikes RS (2016) 2016 Guidelines of the American Society of Mammalogists for the use of wild mammals in research and education. J Mammal 97:663–688

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Smith JA, Thomas AC, Levi T, Wang Y, Wilmers CC (2018) Human activity reduces niche partitioning among three widespread mesocarnivores. Oikos 127:890–901

    Google Scholar 

  • Thornton PE, Thornton MM, Mayer BW, et al (2012) Daymet: Daily surface weather on a 1 km grid for North America, 1980–2008.

  • Watts RD, Compton RW, McCammon JH, Rich CL, Wright SM, Owens T, Ouren DS (2007) Roadless space of the conterminous United States. Science 318:736–738

    Google Scholar 

  • Whiteman JP, Buskirk SW (2013) Footload influences wildlife use of compacted trails in the snow. Wildlife Biol 19:156–164

    Google Scholar 

  • Whittington J, Hebblewhite M, Decesare NJ, Neufeld L, Bradley M, Wilmshurst J, Musiani M (2011) Caribou encounters with wolves increase near roads and trails: a time-to-event approach. J Appl Ecol 48:1535–1542

    Google Scholar 

  • Wickham J, Stehman S, Gass L (2013) Accuracy assessment of NLCD 2006 land cover and impervious surface. Remote Sens Environ 130:294–304

    Google Scholar 

  • Wisz MS, Pottier J, Kissling WD, Pellissier L, Lenoir J, Damgaard CF, Dormann CF, Forchhammer MC, Grytnes J-A, Guisan A, Heikkinen RK, Høye TT, Kühn I, Luoto M, Maiorano L, Nilsson M-C, Normand S, Öckinger E, Schmidt NM, Termansen M, Timmermann A, Wardle Da, Aastrup P, Svenning JC (2013) The role of biotic interactions in shaping distributions and realised assemblages of species: implications for species distribution modelling. Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc 88:15–30

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Wood S (2015) “Package ‘mgcv’.” R package version 1.

  • Woodford JE (2017) Winter track surveys for American marten in northern Wisconsin. 2016–2017. Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Report.

  • Wright JL (1999) Winter home range and habitat use by sympatric fishers (Martes pennanti) and American martens (Martes americana) in Northern Wisconsin. University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, College of Natural Resources. MSc thesis.

  • Zielinski WJ, Duncan NP (2004) Diets of sympatric populations of American martens (Martes americana) and fishers (Martes pennanti) in California. J Mamm 85:470–477

    Google Scholar 

  • Zielinski WJ, Tucker JM, Rennie KM (2017) Niche overlap of competing carnivores across climatic gradients and the conservation implications of climate change at geographic range margins. Biol Conserv 209:533–545

    Google Scholar 

  • Zuckerberg B, Pauli JN (2018) Conserving and managing the subnivium. Conserv Biol 32:774–781

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank A. Dubruiel, A. Wydeven, C. Lapin, C. Cappello, and A. Harrington for their efforts collecting track data in CNF, and S. Johnson-Bice for the collection and curation of camera data in VNP. This work was funded by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (J.N.P.; Hatch Project 229713), and by the National Science Foundation’s Integrated Graduate Education, Research, and Training (IGERT) program (P.J.M.; DGE-1144752). Additional financial support was provided by the National Park Service, Voyageurs National Park, USDA Forest Service, and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, and we thank J. Gilbert and the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission for in-kind support.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Philip J. Manlick

    Present address: Biology Department, University of New Mexico, 219 Yale Blvd NE, Albuquerque, NM, 87171, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1630 Linden Dr., Madison, WI, 53706, USA

    Philip J. Manlick & Jonathan N. Pauli

  2. National Park Service, Voyageurs National Park, 360 Highway 11 East, International Falls, MN, 56649, USA

    Steve K. Windels

  3. Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Bureau of Natural Heritage Conservation, 107 Sutliff Avenue, Rhinelander, WI, 54501, USA

    James E. Woodford

Authors
  1. Philip J. Manlick
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Steve K. Windels
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. James E. Woodford
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Jonathan N. Pauli
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Philip J. Manlick.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Electronic supplementary material

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Manlick, P.J., Windels, S.K., Woodford, J.E. et al. Can landscape heterogeneity promote carnivore coexistence in human-dominated landscapes?. Landscape Ecol 35, 2013–2027 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-020-01077-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-020-01077-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation