After reading the paragraph below, answer the questions that follow.
In southern Africa, jackals are major predators of livestock on farms. As a control measure, farmers often kill jackals they find on their farms. Scientists Liaan Minnie and colleagues predicted that increased mortality of jackals would result in altered life history traits of this carnivore species. To test their predictions, they compared the number of pregnant female jackals in different age classes in populations that were hunted (on farms) to those that were not hunted (in conservation reserves). The resulting pattern shown in the first graph is the proportion of females that are pregnant in each age class. The scientists also collected demographic data to construct age structure diagrams (second graph) of jackals in (a) hunted populations (farms) and (b) populations that were not hunted (reserves). In the age structure diagram, males are plotted on the left, females are plotted on the right, and the median age class is denoted with hatched bars.
Source: Minnie, L., Gaylard, A., & Kerley, G. I. (2016). Compensatory life‐history responses of a mesopredator may undermine carnivore management efforts.
Journal of Applied Ecology, 53(2), 379-387.
What are the management implications of this study?
◦ Hunting is an effective solution to reducing population growth of jackals because killing them shifts farm populations from
K- to
r-selected strategies.
◦ Jackals can be successfully controlled on farms because hunting them results in a steady decrease of their intrinsic rate of increase.
◦ Farm populations of jackals should not be hunted to prevent predation of livestock because density-dependent mortality factors will emerge.
◦ The problem of jackals on farms may be exacerbated by hunting them because these populations of jackals are released from density-dependent limits on reproduction.
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