Energetic constraints on the diet of terrestrial carnivores

Chris Carbone (), Georgina M. Mace, S. Craig Roberts and David W. Macdonald
Additional contact information
Chris Carbone: Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London
Georgina M. Mace: Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London
S. Craig Roberts: Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London
David W. Macdonald: Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, University of Oxford

Nature, 1999, vol. 402, issue 6759, 286-288

Abstract: Abstract Species in the mammalian order Carnivora exhibit a huge diversity of life histories with body sizes spanning more than three orders of magnitude. Despite this diversity, most terrestrial carnivores can be classified as either feeding on invertebrates and small vertebrates or on large vertebrates. Small carnivores feed predominantly on invertebrates probably because they are a superabundant resource (sometimes 90% of animal biomass1,2,3); however, intake rates of invertebrate feeders are low, about one tenth of those of vertebrate feeders4,5. Although small carnivores can subsist on this diet because of low absolute energy requirements, invertebrate feeding appears to be unsustainable for larger carnivores. Here we show, by reviewing the most common live prey in carnivore diets, that there is a striking transition from feeding on small prey (less than half of predator mass) to large prey (near predator mass), occurring at predator masses of 21.5–25 kg. We test the hypothesis that this dichotomy is the consequence of mass-related energetic requirements and we determine the predicted maximum mass that an invertebrate diet can sustain. Using a simple energetic model and known invertebrate intake rates, we predict a maximum sustainable mass of 21.5 kg, which matches the point where predators shift from small to large prey.

Date: 1999
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/46266 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:402:y:1999:i:6759:d:10.1038_46266

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/46266

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().