Spatio-temporal interactions of carnivore species in a coastal ecosystem in Argentina

Abstract

Land-sea interface is an ecotone where the intersection of marine and terrestrial ecosystems create unique ecological conditions for terrestrial mobile species and freshwater-adapted organisms to exploit marine-derived food resources. Mammalian carnivores play an important role in almost any ecosystem where they live due to theirtop-down (or trophic cascade) effects on prey species and primary producers, thus structuring ecosystems along varied food-web pathways. We use camera trapping tostudy the patterns of coexistence, habitat use and activity pattern of carnivores speciesin a coastal area in southern Buenos Aires province, Argentina. We were able to detectfive of the seven species of Mammalian carnivores being the Pampas fox Lycalopexgymnocercus and Geoffroy´s cat Leopardus geoffroyi the two most common.Geoffroy´s cat seems to use more intensively those areas close to the shoreline, whilewe found little support of it for Pampas fox; which seems to use more inland areas.Congruently, we found evidence of a lack of spatial and, to a lower extent, temporalavoidance between the two most common carnivore species of our study area. Ourfindings support those previous studies indicating that the coastal dunes have animportant role in the conservation of the biodiversity of Buenos Aires province. Wildlifeconservation is compatible with carefully-designed ecotourism and limitedinfrastructure development and this may be a unique chance for the areas of BuenosAires coast that have not been affected yet by poorly planned, conservation-unfriendlyurbanization.