University of Tasmania
Browse
152004 - Does historical coexistence.pdf (219.54 kB)

Does historical coexistence with dingoes explain current avoidance of domestic dogs? Island bandicoots are naive to dogs, unlike their mainland counterparts

Download (219.54 kB)
journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-21, 11:16 authored by Anke Frank, Carthey, AJR, Banks, PB

Introduced predators have a global reputation for causing declines and extinctions of native species. Native prey naiveté towards novel predators is thought to be a key reason for predator impacts. However, naiveté is not necessarily forever: where coexistence establishes, it is likely that naiveté will be reduced through adaptation, and the once alien predator will eventually become recognised by prey. For example, native marsupial bandicoots in Sydney avoid backyards with domestic dogs (C. lupus familiaris), but not domestic cats (Felis catus), even though cats and dogs were both introduced about 200 years ago (Carthey and Banks 2012). The authors attributed bandicoots’ recognition of dogs to long-term exposure to a close relative of dogs, dingoes that arrived in Australia 4000 years ago. Here, we test a prediction of this hypothesis by taking the study to Tasmania, where dingoes have never been present but where domestic dogs also arrived about 200 years ago. We use a similar survey design to that of Carthey and Banks (2012): asking Hobart residents to report on pet-ownership, bandicoot sightings and scats within their backyards, as well as an array of yard characteristic control variables. We predicted that if long term experience with dingoes enabled mainland bandicoots to recognise domestic dogs, then Tasmanian bandicoots, which are inexperienced with dingoes, would not recognise domestic dogs. Our results indicate that Tasmanian bandicoots are naïve to both dogs and cats after only 200 years of coexistence, supporting our hypothesis and the notion that naiveté in native prey towards alien predators (as observed on the mainland) may eventually be overcome.

History

Publication title

PLoS ONE

Volume

11

Issue

9

Article number

e0161447

Number

e0161447

Pagination

1-11

ISSN

1932-6203

Department/School

School of Natural Sciences

Publisher

Public Library of Science

Place of publication

United States

Rights statement

© 2016 Frank et al. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Repository Status

  • Open

Socio-economic Objectives

Terrestrial biodiversity

Usage metrics

    University Of Tasmania

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC