Data from: Effects of vulture exclusion on carrion consumption by facultative scavengers

Vultures provide an essential ecosystem service through removal of
carrion, but globally, many populations are collapsing and several species
are threatened with extinction. Widespread declines in vulture populations
could increase the availability of carrion to other organisms, but the
ways facultative scavengers might respond to this increase have not been
thoroughly explored. We aimed to determine whether facultative scavengers
increase carrion consumption in the absence of vulture competition and
whether they are capable of functionally replacing vultures in the removal
of carrion biomass from the landscape. We experimentally excluded 65
rabbit carcasses from vultures during daylight hours and placed an
additional 65 carcasses that were accessible to vultures in forested
habitat in South Carolina, USA during summer (June–August). We used
motion-activated cameras to compare carrion use by facultative scavenging
species between the experimental and control carcasses. Scavenging by
facultative scavengers did not increase in the absence of competition with
vultures. We found no difference in scavenger presence between control
carcasses and those from which vultures were excluded. Eighty percent of
carcasses from which vultures were excluded were not scavenged by
vertebrates, compared to 5% of carcasses that were accessible to vultures.
At the end of the 7-day trials, there was a 10.1-fold increase in the
number of experimental carcasses that were not fully scavenged compared to
controls. Facultative scavengers did not functionally replace vultures
during summer in our study. This finding may have been influenced by the
time of the year in which the study took place, the duration of the
trials, and the spacing of carcass sites. Our results suggest that under
the warm and humid conditions of our study, facultative scavengers would
not compensate for loss of vultures. Carcasses would persist longer in the
environment and consumption of carrion would likely shift from vertebrates
to decomposers. Such changes could have substantial implications for
disease transmission, nutrient cycling, and ecosystem functioning.