Friends or foes? : Importance of wild ungulates as ecosystem engineers for amphibian communities

Baruzzi, Carolina (author), Krofel, Miha (author)

As ecosystem engineers, ungulates can importantly alter the habitats where they live by changing plant cover, soil and water properties through wallowing, rooting, urinating, excreting, grazing and trampling. It is a common belief that wild ungulates, especially wild boar, Sus scrofa, represent a threat to amphibian communities due to disturbance caused while using water pools. On the other hand, ungulates could also create new aquatic habitats suitable for amphibians. So far these effects have been poorly understood. We conducted a pilot study to test whether ungulate engineering action affected amphibians% pool choice comparing amphibian species number in pools created and/or maintained by wild ungulates and pools that were fenced or, for other reasons, not used by ungulates. We observed that amphibians readily used pools also used by ungulates, although amphibian species richness in these pools was generally lower, especially when the pools were smaller. Our results suggest the need for further research and highlight the importance of wild ungulates as ecosystem engineers that create new aquatic habitats, as well as trade-offs connected with the presence of wild ungulate populations for amphibian communities. This has several management and conservation implications and prudent managers could use this understanding to incorporate ungulate management in their conservation programs targeting endangered wildlife that depends on habitats created or modified by these ecosystem engineers.

• Language: English
• Keywords: ecosystem engineers, ungulates, amphibians, disturbance, habitat modification, ekosistemi, kopitarji, dvoživke, motnje, življenjski habitat
• Work type: Not categorized
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: BF - Biotechnical Faculty
• Publication status: Published
• Number of pages: Str. 320-325
• Numbering: #Vol. #13, #iss. #2
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-100744
• UDC: 630*15
• ISSN on article: 1584-9074
• COBISS.SI-ID: 4983462
• Publication date in RUL: 11.04.2018

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: North-Western Journal of Zoology
• Shortened title: North-West. J. Zool.
• Publisher: University of Oradea Publishing House
• COBISS.SI-ID: 2351059

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Description: The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.
• Licensing start date: 11.04.2018