Abstract
Resource competition is an important interaction that can structure ecological communities, but is difficult to demonstrate in nature, and rarely demonstrated for large mammals including marsupials. We analysed 10 years of population survey data to investigate resource competition between bare-nosed wombats (Vombatus ursinus) and eastern grey kangaroos (Macropus giganteus) at two sites to assess whether resource competition is occurring. At one site, wombat abundance was reduced by increased mortality from mange disease, whereas at the other site, kangaroo abundance was reduced primarily by culling. We used the modified Lotka–Volterra competition (LVC) models to describe the mechanism of resource competition and fitted those models to the empirical data by maximum likelihood estimation. We found strong negative relationships between the abundance of wombats and kangaroos at each site, and resource competition was also mechanistically supported by the modified LVC models. The estimated competition coefficients indicate that bare-nosed wombats are a slightly superior competitor of eastern grey kangaroos than vice versa, and that intraspecific competition is almost twice as strong as interspecific competition. In addition, this study facilitated the calculation of the transmission rate associated with mange disease at one site (0.011), and the removal rate owing to culling, the introduction of a predator species, and drought at the other site (0.0006). Collectively, this research represents a rare empirical demonstration of resource competition between large mammals and contributes new insight into the ecology of two of Australia’s largest grazing marsupials.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the Tasmanian Government Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Wildlife and Environment and the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service for their support and cooperation of this work. We also thank the many undergraduate volunteers who have assisted with these surveys.
Funding
This project was partly funded by the Holsworth Wildlife Research Endowment; Cradle Coastal Authority; Australian Research Council Linkage Project (LP180101251).
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SC, CB and JT conceived the idea. All the authors collected the data at Narawntapu National Park and JI provided the data of Point Lesueur. SC and JT created the mechanistic models. JT wrote the manuscript; the other authors provided editorial advice.
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This project was carried out under University of Tasmania Animal Ethic Approval A14670 and A0018662.
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Communicated by Graeme Shannon.
We believe this study is suited to be published as the Highlighted Student Papers. Shows competitive relationship between two large wild mammals—difficult for ethical issues and inability of manipulating wild populations—adding knowledge of population trends in an ecosystem
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Tamura, J., Ingram, J., Martin, A.M. et al. Contrasting population manipulations reveal resource competition between two large marsupials: bare-nosed wombats and eastern grey kangaroos. Oecologia 197, 313–325 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-021-04959-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-021-04959-y