Papers in the Biological Sciences
ORCID IDs
Stella F. Uiterwaal https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2745-5817
Brian Dillard https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1845-2980
Sora L. Kim https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4900-3101
John P. DeLong https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0558-8213
Date of this Version
2023
Citation
J Anim Ecol. 2023;92:901–912
DOI: 10.1111/1365-2656.13901
Abstract
1. Niche differentiation and intraguild predation (IGP) can allow ecologically similar species to coexist, although it is unclear which coexistence mechanism predominates in consumer communities. Until now, a limited ability to quantify diets from metabarcoding data has precluded the use of sequencing data to determine the relative importance of these mechanisms.
2. Here, we pair a recent metabarcoding quantification approach with stable isotope analysis to examine diet composition in a wolf spider community.
3. We compare the prevalence of resource partitioning and IGP in these spiders and test whether factors that influence foraging performance, including individual identity, morphology, prey community and environmental conditions, can explain variation in diet composition and IGP.
4. Extensive IGP is likely the primary coexistence mechanism in this community, and other factors to which foraging variation is often attributed do not explain diet composition and IGP here. Rather, IGP increases as prey diversity decreases.
5. Foragers are driven to IGP where resource niches are limited. We highlight the need to examine how drivers of predator–prey interaction strengths translate into foraging in natural systems.
Comments
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.