The fast-food effect: costs of being a generalist in a human-dominated landscape
Agricultural expansion in Southeast Asia has converted most natural landscapes into mosaics of forest interspersed with plantations, dominated by the presence of generalist species that benefit from resource predictability. Dietary shifts, however, can result in metabolic alterations and the exposur...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2023
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/171562 |
| _version_ | 1826109505422753792 |
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| author | Guerrero-Sanchez, Sergio Frias, Liesbeth Saimin, Silvester Orozco-terWengel, Pablo Goossens, Benoit |
| author2 | Asian School of the Environment |
| author_facet | Asian School of the Environment Guerrero-Sanchez, Sergio Frias, Liesbeth Saimin, Silvester Orozco-terWengel, Pablo Goossens, Benoit |
| author_sort | Guerrero-Sanchez, Sergio |
| collection | NTU |
| description | Agricultural expansion in Southeast Asia has converted most natural landscapes into mosaics of forest interspersed with plantations, dominated by the presence of generalist species that benefit from resource predictability. Dietary shifts, however, can result in metabolic alterations and the exposure of new parasites that can impact animal fitness and population survival. Our study focuses on the Asian water monitor lizard (Varanus salvator), one of the largest predators in the Asian wetlands, as a model species to understand the health consequences of living in a human-dominated landscape in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. We evaluated the effects of dietary diversity on the metabolism of monitor lizards and the impact on the composition of their parasite communities in an oil palm-dominated landscape. Our results showed that (1) rodent-dominated diets were associated with high levels of lipids, proteins and electrolytes, akin to a fast-food-based diet of little representativeness of the full nutritional requirements, but highly available, and (2) lizards feeding on diverse diets hosted more diverse parasite communities, however, at overall lower parasite prevalence. Furthermore, we observed that the effect of diet on lipid concentration differed depending on the size of individual home ranges, suggesting that sedentarism plays an important role in the accumulation of cholesterol and triglycerides. Parasite communities were also affected by a homogeneous dietary behaviour, as well as by habitat type. Dietary diversity had a negative effect on both parasite richness and prevalence in plantations, but not in forested areas. Our study indicates that human-dominated landscapes can pose a negative effect on generalist species and hints to the unforeseen health consequences for more vulnerable taxa using the same landscapes. Thus, it highlights the potential role of such a widely distributed generalist as model species to monitor physiological effects in the ecosystem in an oil palm-dominated landscape. |
| first_indexed | 2024-10-01T02:19:19Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | ntu-10356/171562 |
| institution | Nanyang Technological University |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-10-01T02:19:19Z |
| publishDate | 2023 |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | ntu-10356/1715622023-11-06T15:30:35Z The fast-food effect: costs of being a generalist in a human-dominated landscape Guerrero-Sanchez, Sergio Frias, Liesbeth Saimin, Silvester Orozco-terWengel, Pablo Goossens, Benoit Asian School of the Environment Social sciences::Geography Animal Health Blood Chemistry Agricultural expansion in Southeast Asia has converted most natural landscapes into mosaics of forest interspersed with plantations, dominated by the presence of generalist species that benefit from resource predictability. Dietary shifts, however, can result in metabolic alterations and the exposure of new parasites that can impact animal fitness and population survival. Our study focuses on the Asian water monitor lizard (Varanus salvator), one of the largest predators in the Asian wetlands, as a model species to understand the health consequences of living in a human-dominated landscape in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. We evaluated the effects of dietary diversity on the metabolism of monitor lizards and the impact on the composition of their parasite communities in an oil palm-dominated landscape. Our results showed that (1) rodent-dominated diets were associated with high levels of lipids, proteins and electrolytes, akin to a fast-food-based diet of little representativeness of the full nutritional requirements, but highly available, and (2) lizards feeding on diverse diets hosted more diverse parasite communities, however, at overall lower parasite prevalence. Furthermore, we observed that the effect of diet on lipid concentration differed depending on the size of individual home ranges, suggesting that sedentarism plays an important role in the accumulation of cholesterol and triglycerides. Parasite communities were also affected by a homogeneous dietary behaviour, as well as by habitat type. Dietary diversity had a negative effect on both parasite richness and prevalence in plantations, but not in forested areas. Our study indicates that human-dominated landscapes can pose a negative effect on generalist species and hints to the unforeseen health consequences for more vulnerable taxa using the same landscapes. Thus, it highlights the potential role of such a widely distributed generalist as model species to monitor physiological effects in the ecosystem in an oil palm-dominated landscape. Nanyang Technological University Published version S.G.S. was supported by a scholarship from the Mexican Government’s National Council for Science and Technology (Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología [CONACYT]; scholarship no. 235294). L.F. was supported by the Nanyang Technological University Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship (#020617-00001). 2023-10-31T01:28:56Z 2023-10-31T01:28:56Z 2023 Journal Article Guerrero-Sanchez, S., Frias, L., Saimin, S., Orozco-terWengel, P. & Goossens, B. (2023). The fast-food effect: costs of being a generalist in a human-dominated landscape. Conservation Physiology, 11(1), coad055-. https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/conphys/coad055 2051-1434 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/171562 10.1093/conphys/coad055 37588622 2-s2.0-85168721630 1 11 coad055 en 020617-00001 Conservation Physiology © The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press and the Society for Experimental Biology. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. application/pdf |
| spellingShingle | Social sciences::Geography Animal Health Blood Chemistry Guerrero-Sanchez, Sergio Frias, Liesbeth Saimin, Silvester Orozco-terWengel, Pablo Goossens, Benoit The fast-food effect: costs of being a generalist in a human-dominated landscape |
| title | The fast-food effect: costs of being a generalist in a human-dominated landscape |
| title_full | The fast-food effect: costs of being a generalist in a human-dominated landscape |
| title_fullStr | The fast-food effect: costs of being a generalist in a human-dominated landscape |
| title_full_unstemmed | The fast-food effect: costs of being a generalist in a human-dominated landscape |
| title_short | The fast-food effect: costs of being a generalist in a human-dominated landscape |
| title_sort | fast food effect costs of being a generalist in a human dominated landscape |
| topic | Social sciences::Geography Animal Health Blood Chemistry |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/171562 |
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