ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020
Human disturbance increases trophic niche overlap in terrestrial carnivore communities.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 45 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
45 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 172 citations in OpenAlex.
- Downtown diet: a global meta-analysis of increased urbanization on the diets of vertebrate predators.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Pooled it
- Arboreal and Terrestrial Frugivore Vertebrate Assemblage Diversity and Composition Vary With Disturbance Histories in Guianan Forests.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Global Patterns and Drivers of Climatic Niche Originality and Overlap: Disentangling Ecological From Methodological Signals.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- A trade-off in vital rates for a large carnivore inhabiting an anthropogenic landscape and a protected island ecosystem.Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America · 2026Article
- Asymmetric niche partitioning in large omnivores in response to anthropogenic disturbances within subarctic ecosystems.The Journal of animal ecology · 2026Article
- Isotopic Niche of Three Sympatric Mustelids.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- DNA metabarcoding on roadkill stomach contents reveals the breadth of species present in bobcat diets.PloS one · 2026Article
- Urbanisation Facilitates Intrapopulation Dietary Niche Diversity in a Generalist Carnivore.Ecology letters · 2025Article
- From biologging to conservation: Tracking individual performance in changing environments.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- The Intentional and Unintentional Human Food Subsidy Landscape for a Large Carnivore.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Divergence Across Niche Dimensions Reveals Species' Ecological Roles.Ecology letters · 2025Article
- Dietary Differentiation Mitigates Interspecific Interference Competition Between Sympatric Pallas's Cats (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Effects of Varied Stimuli on Escape Behavior Diversification of Himalayan Marmots for Different Human Disturbances.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Carnivore activity across landuse gradients in a Mexican biosphere reserve.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Daily Activity Patterns and Overlap Activity of Medium-Large Mammals in Sülüklü Lake Nature Park, Western Black Sea Region, Türkiye.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Do Mesocarnivores Respond to the Seasonality in Management Practices in an Agroforestry Landscape?Environmental management · 2024Article
- Dietary Niche Variation in an Invasive Omnivore: The Effects of Habitat on Feral Pig Resource Use in Hawai'i.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Article
- Seasonal Variation in Mammalian Mesopredator Spatiotemporal Overlap on a Barrier Island Complex.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- Human disturbance increases spatiotemporal associations among mountain forest terrestrial mammal species.eLife · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Animal foraging and competition are defined by the partitioning of three primary niche axes: space, time, and resources. Human disturbance is rapidly altering the spatial and temporal niches of animals, but the impact of humans on resource consumption and partitioning-arguably the most important niche axis-is poorly understood. We assessed resource consumption and trophic niche partitioning as a function of human disturbance at the individual, population, and community levels using stable isotope analysis of 684 carnivores from seven communities in North America. We detected significant responses to human disturbance at all three levels of biological organization: individual carnivores consumed more human food subsidies in disturbed landscapes, leading to significant increases in trophic niche width and trophic niche overlap among species ranging from mesocarnivores to apex predators. Trophic niche partitioning is the primary mechanism regulating coexistence in many communities, and our results indicate that humans fundamentally alter resource niches and competitive interactions among terrestrial consumers. Among carnivores, niche overlap can trigger interspecific competition and intraguild predation, while the consumption of human foods significantly increases human-carnivore conflict. Our results suggest that human disturbances, especially in the form of food subsidies, may threaten carnivores by increasing the probability of both interspecific competition and human-carnivore conflict. Ultimately, these findings illustrate a potential decoupling of predator-prey dynamics, with impacts likely cascading to populations, communities, and ecosystems.
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