Abstract
The consequences of biological invasions and habitat degradation for
native biodiversity depend on how species cope with the individual and
synergetic challenges these processes present. To assess the impact of
anthropogenic land-use on the food web architecture of an invaded
community, we examine the diets of nine native and two highly invasive
mammal species at different trophic levels, inhabiting different
land-uses across six biogeographic regions in Tasmania, Australia. We
use two complementary methods, environmental DNA metabarcoding analysis
(eDNA) of faeces and stable isotope analysis (SIA) of nitrogen (N) and
carbon (C) in whole blood, to account for the high inter-individual and
temporal variability in animal diets. eDNA showed regionalisation in the
diet of smaller species, with land-use further defining dietary taxa
within each region. SIA revealed that bioregion and land-use influence
the δ13C values of all carnivore species and omnivores, whereas the δ15N
values of these species are influenced only by land-use and not
bioregion. Including multiple species showed that native rats are
changing their diet in response to the presence of invasive rats, an
impact that would have been otherwise attributed to land-use. Our
findings demonstrate that human activities and invasive species are
molding the diets of invaded communities raising questions about the
potential impacts that dietary modifications will have on the
life-history traits and the evolutionary consequences these
modifications might have on the survival of native species. This
highlights the urgency to include human activities in ecological studies
and the importance of targeting multispecies assemblages to gain a
better understanding of synergetic impacts on native biodiversity.