Insects for breakfast and whales for dinner: the diet and body condition of dingoes on Fraser Island (K’gari)

摘要: Top-predators play stabilising roles in island food webs, including Fraser Island, Australia. Subsidising generalist predators with human-sourced could disrupt this balance, but has been proposed to improve the overall health of island’s dingo (Canis lupus dingo) population, which is allegedly ‘starving’ or ‘poor condition’. We assess hypothesis by describing diet and dingoes on Island from datasets collected between 2001 2015. Medium-sized mammals (such as bandicoots) fish were most common items detected scat records. Stomach contents records revealed additional information diet, such occurrence foods. Trail camera highlighted utilisation stranded marine fauna, particularly turtles whales. Mean adult body weights higher than national average, condition scores abundant-excessive fat reserves indicated a generally ideal-heavy physical condition, parasite loads low comparable other populations. These data do not support hypotheses that have restricted diets are poor condition. Rather, they indicate capable exploiting diverse array sources contributes vast majority being good-excellent