{"id":156390,"date":"2014-08-24T13:10:45","date_gmt":"2014-08-24T16:10:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=156390"},"modified":"2015-07-03T14:57:24","modified_gmt":"2015-07-03T17:57:24","slug":"change-menu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/change-menu\/","title":{"rendered":"Change of menu"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Less

Eduardo Cesar<\/span>Less succulent diet: cougars also hunt animals in planted fieldsEduardo Cesar<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

The cougars that live in the forested areas of the Campinas metropolitan region may dream about a daily banquet of anteaters or peccaries, which are now rare in those parts. Unfortunately, these large suburban felines have to be content with a less succulent diet consisting mainly of rodents, birds and snakes. In addition, most of their hunting occurs not in the forest, but in sugarcane and other planted fields.<\/p>\n

The cougar\u2019s change of diet has become apparent in light of a pioneering analysis by researchers from the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (USP), the University of Campinas (Unicamp) and the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity (ICMBio). They collected fecal samples from these animals and, using visual and physicochemical analysis, reconstructed the cougars\u2019 diet and determined where their prey came from. \u201cCougars and their wild prey have no alternative,\u201d explains biologist Marcelo Magioli of the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture (Esalq) at USP in Piracicaba, first author of a paper that described the diet of cougars in S\u00e3o Paulo in the July 2014 issue of the journal Biotropica<\/i>. \u201cUnable to find food in the forest remnants, felines have adapted to looking for prey on farmland.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before researching the cougars\u2019 diet, Magioli conducted a survey of medium-sized and large mammals living in the largest fragments of native vegetation in a 665-square-kilometer (km\u00b2) area that includes Campinas and neighboring municipalities, for his master\u2019s thesis under the supervision of K\u00e1tia Ferraz at Esalq. In the survey he identified 27 species, seven of which are endangered in the state of S\u00e3o Paulo.<\/p>\n

Threatened with extinction, the cougar (<\/span>Puma concolor<\/i>) is the last of the large predators in many of the state\u2019s forest fragments, and it sits at the top of the food chain. Along with its main competitor\u2014the jaguar (<\/span>Panthera onca<\/i>), which is nearly extinct in the state\u2014the cougar is left to prey on capybaras and other herbivores, which keeps the population of such animals from becoming pests. In nature, competition for food between cougars and other large carnivores such as ocelots and maned wolves helps control the population of other animals. But reduction of native vegetation and hunting are slowly reducing the numbers of these felines in the Americas. \u201cWe need more accurate data on the cougar population in S\u00e3o Paulo State, but we think it is dwindling,\u201d says biologist Lilian Bonjorne de Almeida of the National Center for Research and Conservation of Carnivorous Mammals at ICMBio, who studies the cougars of the Serra da Cantareira mountain range in the S\u00e3o Paulo metropolitan region.<\/span><\/p>\n

Over a year\u2019s time, Magioli explored along dirt roads and trails in the forests of Campinas and nearby municipalities looking for animal tracks, footprints and droppings. He collected 30 fecal samples, which were analyzed by biologists Eleonore Setz and Mariana Canhoto, both at Unicamp. They identified pieces of bone, claws, teeth, skin, feathers and scales of prey eaten by the cougars, in addition to fur from the cougars themselves. Like domestic cats, cougars ingest their own fur through grooming.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Biologists Marcelo Moreira and Pl\u00ednio de Camargo of the USP Center for Nuclear Energy in Agriculture then performed a physicochemical analysis of the material, measuring the ratios of two types of carbon atoms that have different masses\u2014the stable isotopes. \u201cDifferences in these isotope ratios enable us to determine whether the cougars\u2019 prey fed more on resources from the forest or from sugarcane fields,\u201d Magioli explains.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pacas, birds and snakes
\n<\/span><\/strong>The team examined 34 additional fecal samples obtained by biologist Renata Miotto, also from Esalq, in a 1,700-km\u00b2 area around the cities of Ribeir\u00e3o Preto, Rio Claro and S\u00e3o Carlos, farther away from the state capital (see Pesquisa FAPESP<\/i> Issue No. 199<\/a>). Although both regions include major urban centers and rural areas where sugarcane predominates, the section that Miotto studied has a proportionately larger area of native vegetation.<\/p>\n

The diet of the cougars around Ribeir\u00e3o Preto, S\u00e3o Carlos and Rio Claro included more large animals that have been disappearing from the Campinas area, such as tamanduas (arboreal anteaters) and peccaries. The cougars around Campinas also consume large mammals such as pacas and capybaras, but they feed more on small animals such as birds and snakes.<\/span><\/p>\n

The carbon isotope analysis also revealed that many animals hunted by cougars in both regions have a diet that is very much split between native plants and agricultural crops. But the proportion of prey that feed preferentially on planted crops increases in the less wooded areas: nearly 50% consumed mainly plants cultivated by man in Campinas, a figure that dropped to 17% in Ribeir\u00e3o Preto and S\u00e3o Carlos. \u201cHerbivores are eating more planted crops because of lack of native vegetation,\u201d Magioli explains. \u201cEspecially the capybara, which prefers more open areas and has adapted well to the sugarcane fields.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Magioli and his colleagues hope this information will be useful for conservation of the species and for the Jaguar Corridor Project. Under the coordination of Ademar Romero, an economist at Unicamp, and M\u00e1rcia Rodrigues, an environmental analyst at ICMBio, this program seeks to boost the conservation of forest fragments in Campinas and create corridors to facilitate animal movement between fragments. \u201cAlthough some animals may adapt to an agricultural landscape,\u201d Magioli says, \u201cfragments of native vegetation are essential to their survival.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Scientific article
\n<\/span><\/em>MAGIOLI, M.\u00a0et al<\/em>.\u00a0Stable isotope evidence of\u00a0Puma concolor<\/em>\u00a0(Felidae) feeding patterns in agricultural landscapes in Southeastern Brazil.<\/a>\u00a0Biotropica<\/strong>. v. 46, n.4. Jul. 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cougars depend on farmland for survival in the state of S\u00e3o Paulo ","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[159],"tags":[206],"coauthors":[103],"class_list":["post-156390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","tag-biodiversity"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156390"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=156390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}