How to steal food from predators – behavioural strategies of a scavenger
The ecological relationships between scavengers, predators and their prey can substantially influence their behaviour and population dynamics. Still, the impact of scavenging has been largely underestimated in food-web ecology. In this project I want to investigate the behavioural adaptations of a facultative and kleptoparasitic scavenger in relation to a predator. I aim to study one of the Northern hemisphere’s most widespread predator-scavenger system: wolves and ravens. In many areas wolves recolonize and increase the time period over which carrion is available and abundant overall. By using existing data on a large spatial scale, I will test and quantify for the first time, whether the recolonization of a top predator affects facultative scavengers like ravens at a population level; if this is the case, I will quantify these effects. Besides this, the main focus of this proposal is to identify which foraging and scrounging strategies ravens follow to locate and exploit wolf kills. I will create a unique dataset by GPS-tracking ravens in the Yellowstone National Park, in the same area where also wolves are intensively monitored and GPS-tracked. I will describe this predator-scavenger system and study the behavioural adaptations of ravens in relation to the wolves’ movements and predation. The collaboration with the Yellowstone wolf project - a natural ecosystem with minimal human impact - and the use of the latest tracking technology, the supervision by leading experts in animal movement analysis and my expertise on ravens lead to a synergic project, bigger than the sum of its parts, and will advance this field of research. Appropriate training, supervision and new collaborations will allow a significant improvement in my career perspective and enable me to become an independent researcher.