In an article to be published Friday in science advances, researchers from the Travellers Wolf Project at the University of Minnesota and Travellers National Park observed and demonstrated that wolves live in wetland ecosystems killing beavers who leave their colonies to create new ponds.
Beavers are ecosystem engineers who create wetlands around the world, buy water, and create habitat for many other species. This study shows that wolves replace the creation of wetlands when they kill beavers who have left their homes and created their own prey and ponds.
Young beavers disperse themselves and create new ponds or fix and recolonize existing old ponds. Reading the patterns of pond creation and recolonization and the predation of wolves in beavers, biologists and co-authors of assignments Tom Gable and Austin Homkes discovered that 84% of the new Beaver Ponds created and recolonized remained occupied by beavers for more than a year, but when a wolf kills the beaver that settles in a pond , none of these ponds remain active.
This dating between scattered wolves and beavers on how wolves are related in detail to the creation of wetlands in the boreal ecosystem and to all ecological processes originating in wetlands.
“The effect of giant predators on ecosystems has been a topic of interest among scientists and the public for decades,” said Gable, project manager at Wolf Travelers. “Because wolves are the main predators in northern Minnesota and beavers are ecosystem engineers, we knew that wolves can potentially create ecosystems by killing beavers.
Researchers found that wolves can have an effect on wetlands without necessarily converting beaver abundance or behavior. This recently sustained link between the predation of wolves, the dispersal of beavers and wetlands can have long-term effects on the boreal habitat landscapes of other species. The task of The Wolf Travelers is to read the long-term effects of this relationship.
“In 2015, we documented a wolf killing a beaver scattered in a newly created pond,” said Homkes, a box biologist for the Traveler Wolf Project. “A few days after the wolf killed the beaver, the prey failed because there was no beaver. “The wolf gave the impression that he had prevented the beaver from converting this wooded domain into a pond. This initial was desirable and we learned that we needed to perceive how wolves were similar to creating wetlands in the Great Travellers ecosystem. . “
After five years of extensive fieldwork, Gable, Homkes and their colleagues estimated that wolves have altered the status quo of approximately 88 ponds according to the year and the garage of more than 51 million gallons of water according to the year in the Great Travellers ecosystem. observed in 2015 has not yet been colonized through some other beaver, said Gable, who recorded the video in mid-September 2020.
“Our paintings suggest that the option that wolves could have a long-term effect on wetland creation and generate habitat inequality that supports many other species throughout the landscape, however, we want to examine this mechanism more thoroughly,” Joseph Bump said. , co-author and associate professor in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology of the University.
Wolves and giant predators are sometimes thought to have disproportionate ecological effects primarily by cutting off the abundance of prey or by changing the behavior of prey for fear of predation, allowing predators to have an oblique effect on declining portions of the food chain, such as vegetation. and other wild animals. Some studies have even claimed that wolves have an effect on river ecosystems through trófic cascades, but this has generated a really extensive skepticism and is a subject of intense debate among scientists.
“The fact that we have convincingly demonstrated that wolves can have an effect on wetlands without necessarily changing beaver abundance or behavior is a truly exciting discovery,” said co-author Sean Johnson-Bice, an assignment contributor at the University of Manitoba.
“The Great Travelers ecosystem is located in a flat landscape dominated by water and trees, creating the best situations that lately some of the highest beaver densities in North America,” said Steve Windels, wildlife researcher and co-author of Voyageurs National Park.
<< While we have no evidence that wolves restrict the length of travelers' beaver population, it is imperative to perceive the complex and nuanced tactics in which predators and prey influence each other and their environment is essential to fulfill the National Park Service project and maintain our resources for generations in the long term. "
To do this, a new and exclusive way is known in which predators influence ecological processes, which in the end enriches our understanding of the varied roles that predators play in ecosystems.