DOI: 10.5061/dryad.rfj6q57b4
title: Data from: Dingoes dining with death

description: Dingoes (Canis dingo) are known for hunting and killing animals to meet
 their energetic requirements, but like almost all predators they also
 scavenge animal remains. To improve our understanding of dingo scavenging
 ecology, we investigated the role of abiotic and biotic factors in shaping
 carcass utilisation by dingoes and further determined whether dingo
 scavenging influenced carcass persistence in the landscape. To do so, we
 monitored visitation and scavenging by dingoes using remote cameras
 positioned on 119 kangaroo carcasses in open and closed canopy habitats
 and in warm and cool seasons. The carcasses were monitored across multiple
 study sites, which incorporated forest, alpine and desert ecoregions in
 Australia. We found that season played an important role in shaping
 carcass utilisation by dingoes, as well as carcass persistence. Warmer
 seasons increased the rate of carcass discovery 6.3-fold in the Forest
 study site and 4.8-fold in the Alpine study site, and also increased the
 time dingoes spent feeding on carcasses in the Alpine study site. Further,
 across all study sites, carcasses persisted at least 4.7 times longer in
 cool compared with warm seasons. On the other hand, carcass utilisation by
 dingoes was not influenced by habitat, although carcasses were more likely
 to persist in open compared with closed canopy habitats in the Alpine
 study site. Finally, our study showed that dingo scavenging may contribute
 to substantial carcass removal in certain contexts. Indeed, decreased
 carcass persistence in the Forest study site was evident in the cool
 season, when dingo scavenging occurred during the first two weeks of
 monitoring. The variability in results highlights the complexity of
 patterns in dingo scavenging and, more broadly, of vertebrate scavenging.
 It emphasises the need to consider multiple abiotic and biotic factors to
 properly understand the functional roles of different scavenger species.
 Longer-term studies with additional seasonal replicates may also yield a
 more detailed picture of the role of dingoes as apex scavengers.
description: <strong>Study Sites</strong> Our
 study sites cover two locations in New South Wales and one in Queensland,
 Australia. These sites were selected as they are home to a moderate-sized
 population of dingoes and represent diverse habitats. In particular,
 research was undertaken in the Wolgan Valley in the Blue Mountains,
 eastern New South Wales (NSW) (“Forest” study site; between August 2017 –
 February 2018), on the Snowy and Botherum Plains in Kosciuszko National
 Park, southern NSW (“Alpine” study site; between March 2018 – January
 2019) and at Ethabuka Reserve in the Simpson Desert, western Queensland
 (“Desert” study site; between June – November 2018; Figure 1).
 <strong>Carcass Monitoring</strong>
 In each study site, we distributed 20 kangaroo carcasses in both
 cool (winter and autumn) and warm (summer, spring) periods, with half
 placed in open and half placed in closed canopy habitats. Our study sites
 included a mix of grassland (open) and woodland (closed) habitats in the
 Forest and Alpine study sites, and dune crest (open) and valley (closed)
 habitats in the Desert study site. Open canopy habitats lacked canopy
 cover and were at least 50 m from any densely forested or vegetated land.
 Closed canopy habitats had more than 20% canopy cover. We tried to ensure
 that these closed canopy sites were at least 50 m from any open space;
 however, this was not possible in the Desert study site due to the general
 sparsity of trees.In each season, carcasses were separated by at least 1km
 to mitigate scent travel between carcasses. We used dead, adult eastern
 grey kangaroos (Macropus giganteus; Forest and Alpine study sites) or dead
 adult red kangaroos (Osphranter rufus; Desert study site) sourced from
 nearby management culls. Any carcasses displaying evidence of disease
 (e.g. heavy parasite loads), were not used. Each carcass was placed into
 the field without freezing within 24 hours (warm period) or 36 hours (cool
 period) of collection. Scientific licenses/permits were obtained to
 relocate the kangaroo carcasses (SL 101901 and SPP WA0006737) and research
 was approved by the University of Sydney Animal Ethics Committee (Project
 number: 2017/1173). To allow for ongoing monitoring and
 detection of dingoes visiting and feeding on each carcass, we fastened a
 Reconyx PC800 Hyperfire™ camera trap (Professional Reconyx Inc., Holmen,
 WI, USA) to a free-standing star picket, approximately 3–4 m away from
 each carcass. Each camera was programmed to take continuous photographs
 when triggered by thermal movement around the carcass (rapidfire, no wait
 period). To prevent complete removal of the carcasses from the remote
 camera monitoring frame, each carcass was secured to the ground by wire
 attaching the neck and achilles tendon of the animal to two metal stakes
 spaced ~0.6 m apart. Cameras were used to monitor carcasses until only
 skin and bones remained (&lt; 4 months); however, at the Alpine study
 site carcasses were monitored for only 30 days due to the high risk of
 camera theft. All photographs were tagged according to
 each new visitation event by one or more dingoes to a carcass, the number
 of dingoes present, whether the dingoes engaged in scavenging behaviour or
 not, and the date and time that the observation was recorded. A visitation
 event was considered new if it occurred ≥ 10 min from the previous
 visitation event by the same dingo. Different individual dingoes were
 identified using markings, size and sex. We then extracted four values
 from the images that we tagged including: “presence”, “scavenging”,
 “discovery time” and “total feeding time”. Presence was calculated as the
 number of carcasses that dingoes were recorded visiting, and scavenging
 was the number of carcasses where they were recorded feeding. Discovery
 time was calculated in decimal hours as the time between when the carcass
 was first positioned and the arrival of the first visiting dingo. Total
 feeding time was calculated as the sum of all feeding events at a given
 carcass for all dingoes. We calculated the duration of a given feeding
 event by subtracting the time at the start of the visit from the time at
 the end of the visit. We rounded all feeding visits to the closest minute;
 however, for visits less than 30 seconds, we considered the species
 present for 1 min rather than 0 mins. Using a combination of in-person
 visual inspection of the carcasses and inspection of camera images, we
 determined the number of days until complete carcass consumption. A
 carcass was defined as completely consumed when only skin, hair and/or
 bone remained.