W*****B
发帖数: 4796 | 1 很多被其它动物吃掉了
Mystery meat: scientists are investigating the roadkill we never get to see
Thank goodness for scavenger animals.
That flattened raccoon or broken reptile might just be something to drive
past for motorists, but for scavenging animals, it’s breakfast. A new study
published today in the Journal of Urban Ecology is the first to look at the
role of these scavengers in performing roadkill removal—and its results
call into question whether we’re even counting roadkill right.
In the study, scientists from the University of Cardiff in Wales set up
camera traps equipped with chicken heads at twelve sites around Cardiff.
When an animal came to scavenge the “roadkill,” the camera photographed it
, documenting time, type of scavenger, and location. Although scientists
have studied roadkill in numerous ways, this is the first time they’ve used
camera traps to capture the identity of scavengers.
And the results were unexpected: “We were quite surprised when we put down
our fake roadkill how quickly it was removed,” says ecologist Sarah Perkins
, one of the study authors. In 62 percent of cases, scavengers—from corvids
like ravens and magpies to household cats and dogs—came by within two
hours to collect and devour the chicken heads in question.
Perkins is the coordinator of Project Splatter, a United Kingdom-wide
citizen science initiative run out of the University of Cardiff that has
members of the public act as field researchers, finding and cataloguing
local roadkill. Laypeople use social media, a form on the project website,
or a smartphone app to record roadkill, while the researchers use GIS
technology to produce an interactive map of the resulting data points. This
study provides new context about the roadkill that members of the public
aren’t recording and observing, since it’s already in the belly of another
beast.
"Removal of animals by scavengers is believed to be the most important
factor causing underestimations of roadkill numbers, particularly of small
animals such as garden birds and rodents," lead author Amy Williams
Schwartz said in a press release.
The researchers found that corvids are the most common scavengers, while
small rodents took nibbles out of the chicken heads but didn’t commandeer
the whole thing. They also found that time of day mattered: camera traps
baited in the early morning were most likely to record quick scavenging.
This kind of research “is not just an academic exercise,” says University
of California at Davis ecologist Fraser Shilling. It’s about understanding
the real movements of animals, he says, and has implications for
conservation as well as road safety. Shilling, who was not involved in the
University of Cardiff study, is co-director of the UC Davis Road Ecology
Center, which studies the ecology of roads and roadkill in a North American
context.
It also illustrates that our current understanding of urban wildlife might
be leaving some things out, says Perkins. The surprising speed of chicken
head removal suggests that roadkill may be more important as a source of
food for urban wildlife than currently thought, she says. It also suggests
that there may be “more urban wildlife than we thought there was.”
While the study’s results are unique to Cardiff, they point to a more
general pattern that has yet to be explored, she says: “We know that
elsewhere there is lots of wildlife roadkill, so that is a potential
resource for lots of scavenging species.” Shilling works on the less-
colorfully named Californian Roadkill Observation System, another citizen
science initiative. Among other things, the CROS is specifically looking for
roadkill “hotspots” where infrastructure changes might result in fewer
deaths.
To date Shilling’s lab hasn’t employed camera traps to figure out what
kind of scavengers might be making off with the flattened animals. That
piece is a “nice addition” in the Cardiff study, he says: it provides new
evidence about the rate of loss for roadkill as well as offers information
about scavenging species.
Those species, like gulls and, in the United Kingdom, foxes, might be
considered nuisances, but Perkins says knowing about their role as roadkill
cleanup points to their positive place in urban ecosystems: they’re the
cleanup crew. Without them, life might be much stinkier. | g*******1
发帖数: 826 | 2 自然界的一种平衡
－－－
人在无尽的烦恼中犹如大海波涛，一浪接一浪永无止境，保持自性的光明清净，学会在
人间无所谓，调节自心，世间本来无一物，何处惹尘埃？ | o****p
发帖数: 9785 | 3 都被带走吃掉了。至少加州撞死动物报告警察以后就可以拖走了。有很多弄game meat
的地方，一头鹿上百刀帮你兜处理好。
see
study
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【在 W*****B 的大作中提到】
: 很多被其它动物吃掉了
: Mystery meat: scientists are investigating the roadkill we never get to see
: Thank goodness for scavenger animals.
: That flattened raccoon or broken reptile might just be something to drive
: past for motorists, but for scavenging animals, it’s breakfast. A new study
: published today in the Journal of Urban Ecology is the first to look at the
: role of these scavengers in performing roadkill removal—and its results
: call into question whether we’re even counting roadkill right.
: In the study, scientists from the University of Cardiff in Wales set up
: camera traps equipped with chicken heads at twelve sites around Cardiff.
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