The Ecology of Wildlife Recovery: Puma Behavioral Response to a Novel Resource

Background/Question/Methods

Fluctuations in resource availability can have profound impacts on consumer-resource dynamics that ultimately impact ecological processes at the individual, population, and community level. The effect of resource availability is expected to be particularly strong if it leads to a resource pulse, or a temporary hyperabundance of resources. For a resource pulse where the resource is abundant and concentrated, the Resource Dispersion Hypothesis predicts that consumers will both decrease space use and increase social tolerance of conspecifics. However, not all consumers will readily switch prey following a resource pulse which may generate divergent behavioral syndromes in a given population. In Patagonia, widespread wildlife recovery efforts have led to an increase in both pumas and their main prey, guanacos. However, the previous absence of pumas is thought to have triggered the rapid expansion of Magellanic penguin colonies across the coast of Patagonia. Monte León National Park, in southern Patagonia, is home to nearly 90,000 breeding Magellanic penguins and a recovering population of both pumas and guanacos. Here, we integrate diet and movement data to test how diet specialization in a marine resource pulse (i.e. penguins) impacts the movement patterns, habitat selection, and social tolerance of pumas.

Results/Conclusions

Our results reveal sharply contrasting behavioral syndromes between pumas that predate penguins and pumas that don’t. Pumas that predate penguins had significantly different movement patterns than other pumas in the park with smaller home ranges, shorter step lengths, longer residence time, and shorter time to return rates. In addition, we found divergent habitat selection patterns between the two groups. Pumas that predate penguins selected less for both ruggedness and shrub cover, both thought to heavily influence the success of hunting large prey items. Finally, we found that pumas that predate penguins overlapped significantly more with other pumas and encountered other individuals at a significantly higher rate. Overall, our results suggest that penguins, as a resource pulse, drastically change the ecology of this puma population. For Monte León National Park and other recovering wildlife populations along the coast of Patagonia, changes to resource landscapes and the subsequent change to consumer behaviors, may have significant downstream consequences for alternative prey and competing carnivores.