Data from: Cascading effects of a disease outbreak in a remote protected area

Disease outbreaks induced by humans increasingly threaten wildlife
communities worldwide. Like predators, pathogens can be key top-down
forces in ecosystems, initiating trophic cascades that may alter food
webs. An outbreak of mange in a remote Andean protected area caused a
dramatic population decline in a mammalian herbivore (the vicuña),
creating conditions to test the cascading effects of disease on the
ecological community. By comparing a suite of ecological measurements to
pre-disease baseline records, we demonstrate that mange restructured
tightly-linked trophic interactions previously driven by a mammalian
predator (the puma). Following the mange outbreak, scavenger (Andean
condor) occurrence in the ecosystem declined sharply and plant biomass and
cover increased dramatically in predation refuges where herbivory was
historically concentrated. The evidence shows that a disease-induced
trophic cascade, mediated by vicuña density, could supplant the
predator-induced trophic cascade, mediated by vicuña behavior, thereby
transforming the Andean ecosystem.