Churchill, Joseph Eric (2020) What makes an ecosystem tick? Master's Research Project 1, Ecology and Evolution.
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Abstract
Predators are essential in regulating deer habitat-use and space movement. This can cause deer to avoid areas they perceive as more dangerous than others to avoid predation. This has the potential to cause indirect effects on lower trophic levels. In human dominated landscapes it is known that humans can replace the non-lethal effects of predators by triggering fear responses in deer. However, it is unclear if other species are affected by fear responses seen in deer. We investigated two invertebrate species as biological indicators to assess the extent of indirect behavioural mediated effects. We used a forest which had hiking tracks of both high and low levels of human activity. We investigated deer droppings across 150m transects at 20m and 100m into the forest from a hiking track of high and low human activity, as a proxy of deer space use. We then tested the differences of tick and dung beetle abundances at 20m and 100m into the forest from the same hiking tracks. Alongside this, dung removal experiments were placed on the same transects as a proxy of nutrient cycling. We found more deer droppings and more ticks in areas of low human activity. Whilst beetles and dung removal rates were unaffected. Our results suggest human activity causes an avoidance behaviour in deer, and this avoidance behaviour causes a decrease in tick abundance. The consequences of this inter-trophic link is important as it has implications into conservation management and Lyme disease prevalence,
| Item Type: | Thesis (Master's Research Project 1) |
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| Supervisor name: | Mols, B. and Smit, C. |
| Degree programme: | Ecology and Evolution |
| Thesis type: | Master's Research Project 1 |
| Language: | English |
| Date Deposited: | 01 Apr 2020 08:38 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Apr 2020 08:38 |
| URI: | https://fse.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/21694 |
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