African wild dog access to kills

Patterns of food sharing in collectively hunting species are likely to influence social dynamics and evolution. Despite this, little is known about competition within social groups at carcasses and other food sources, making the social drivers and implications of food sharing difficult to assess. We quantified carcass access and feeding behavior in free-ranging African wild dogs, Lycaon pictus, at natural kill sites, confirming and quantifying previous descriptions of a youngest-feed-first system. Using data on feeding duration and latency to feed, we confirm that the position in the feeding queue (PFQ) runs from youngest to oldest, except the dominant pair, which generally feed after the pups. We found some evidence that older subdominants were more likely to participate in kills, perhaps because they may only gain access to carcasses at the most profitable early stages of consumption if they make the kill themselves. These dogs were no more likely to initiate hunts or sustain probable...群居捕猎物种的食物分享模式，很可能对其社会动态与演化进程产生重要影响。尽管已有这一认知，但学界目前对群居动物在猎物尸体及其他食物源处的群体内竞争仍知之甚少，这使得我们难以评估食物分享行为的社会驱动因素及其潜在影响。我们针对自然猎杀现场中自由活动的非洲野犬（Lycaon pictus），量化分析了其尸体取食权与取食行为，证实并量化了此前提出的「幼崽优先取食」系统。通过取食时长与取食潜伏期数据，我们确认取食队列（feeding queue, PFQ）的顺位遵循从幼崽到成年个体的顺序，但优势繁殖对通常属于例外，它们一般会在幼崽完成取食后再进食。我们发现部分证据表明，年长的次优势个体更有可能参与捕猎，这或许是因为唯有亲自参与猎杀，它们才能在取食收益最高的早期阶段获得腐尸的取食机会。此类个体发起捕猎或维持潜在捕猎行为的概率并未更高……