Increased agricultural intensification and extensive woody plant encroachment are having widespread effects on the functioning of grass-dominated systems at multiple spatial scales. Yet there is little understanding of how the provisioning of biodiversity-based ecosystem services might be altered by these ongoing changes. One fundamental ecosystem service that is decreasing globally, especially in human-altered landscapes, is scavenging that regulates disease processes, alters species distributions, and influences nutrient cycling. Accordingly, our goal was to understand how facultative scavenging, particularly that of mesocarnivores, was affected by landscape heterogeneity and woody encroachment in tropical-grassy savannas within an agricultural landscape mosaic. We baited (using chicken carcasses) plots across a gradient of land cover heterogeneity in areas with an open and closed canopy and subsequently measured scavenging rates. We found that scavenging efficiency of mesocarnivores and other small vertebrates was dependent on environmental variation at multiple spatial scales within our savanna agroecosystem. Mesocarnivores removed more bait when the overstory canopy at the plot (i.e., exact location of bait station) was more closed; in contrast, mesocarnivore scavenging was less efficient when patches (50 × 50 m area around the bait station) within the site had a higher density of shrubs. At the landscape scale, increased land cover fragmentation resulted in decreased amounts of scavenging by mesocarnivores. This study demonstrates that a relatively transformed agroecosystem can support the provision of important ecosystem services and offer an important buffer against loss of ecosystem services. Our results suggest that targeted woody encroachment control, protection of large trees, and management or mitigation of extreme levels of fragmentation can help maintain ecosystem service provision and biodiversity.

农业集约化的增加和广泛的木本植物侵占正在对多个空间尺度上以草为主的系统的功能产生广泛影响。然而，人们对这些持续变化可能会如何改变基于生物多样性的生态系统服务的供应知之甚少。一种在全球范围内正在减少的基本生态系统服务，特别是在人类改变的景观中，是调节疾病过程、改变物种分布和影响养分循环的清除。因此，我们的目标是了解兼性清除，尤其是中型食肉动物的清除，如何受到农业景观镶嵌中热带草原稀树草原的景观异质性和木质侵占的影响。我们在具有开放和封闭树冠的地区在土地覆盖异质性梯度上对地块进行了诱饵（使用鸡尸体），随后测量了清除率。我们发现中型食肉动物和其他小型脊椎动物的清除效率取决于我们稀树草原农业生态系统内多个空间尺度的环境变化。当地块的上层树冠（即诱饵站的确切位置）更封闭时，中食肉动物移除更多诱饵；相比之下，当场地内的斑块（诱饵站周围 50 × 50 m 区域）具有较高的灌木密度时，中型食肉动物的清除效率较低。在景观尺度上，土地覆盖破碎化的增加导致中型食肉动物的食腐数量减少。本研究表明，相对转变的农业生态系统可以支持提供重要的生态系统服务，并为生态系统服务的丧失提供重要的缓冲。我们的研究结果表明，有针对性的木本侵占控制、保护大树以及管理或减轻极端程度的碎片化有助于维持生态系统服务的提供和生物多样性。