EDITOR'S CHOICE IN ECOLOGY
© STEVEN RUITER/FOTO NATURA/MINDEN PICTURES/CORBIS
A. Cortés-Avizanda et al., “Resource unpredictability promotes species diversity and coexistence in an avian scavenger guild: a field experiment,” Ecology, 93:2570-79, 2012.
The natural experiment
Since the early 1970s, conservationists in northern Spain have encouraged farmers and hunters to dispose of animal carcasses at what have come to be known as “vulture restaurants” to buffer against the decline of scavenging birds in the area. But while some species have begun to rebound, many are still endangered, prompting Ainara Cortés-Avizanda of the Estación Biológica de Doñana (EBD-CSIC) in Seville and her colleagues to investigate the effectiveness of this conservation effort.
The researchers placed 58 carcasses around the study site—either at established vulture restaurants, where birds routinely waited for food,...