Behavioral interactions are modulated by facilitation along a heterotrophic succession

Abstract

Competition and facilitation drive ecological succession but are often hard toquantify. In this sense, behavioral data may be a key tool to analyze interactionnetworks, providing insights into temporal trends in facilitation and competitionprocesses within animal heterotrophic succession. Here, we perform the firstin-depth analysis of the factors driving temporal dynamics of carcass consump-tion by analyzing behavioral patterns (i.e., interactions) and community dynam-ics metrics (i.e., species richness, abundance, turnover, and diversity) in aNeotropical scavenger guild. For this purpose, we monitored goat carcasses usingautomatic cameras. From 573 reviewed videos, we registered 1784 intraspecificand 624 interspecific interactions, using intraspecific and interspecific aggressions(n = 2048) as a behavioral proxy of competition intensity. Our results show thatresource availability shapes behavioral interactions between vultures, with a spe-cific effect of the different species on behavioral and competition dynamics,showing the existence of a hierarchy between species. Furthermore, behavioralprocesses linked to carcass opening tended to be facilitative, related to momentsof higher tolerance (i.e., lower aggressiveness), thus reducing competition inten-sity and also affecting community structure and dynamics. This novel frameworkdemonstrates complex ephemeral successional processes characterized by a fluc-tuation in facilitation and competition intensity during the consumption of anunpredictable resource linked to key ecosystem processes.