The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Similarities and contrasts in the diets of foxes, Vulpes vulpes, and cats, Felis catus, relative to fluctuating prey populations and drought
Abstract
The diets of the fox, Vulpes vulpes, and feral cat, Felis catus, were studied at Yathong Nature Reserve in semi-arid western New South Wales. The overall occurrence of rabbit was 45.1% in stomachs of foxes and 54.0% in cats, representing 51.3 and 82.6% respectively of the weight of stomach contents. Both predators exhibited a functional response to rabbits, Oryctolagus cuniculus, (their staple prey) during the rabbit breeding season. Predation on rabbits was greatest on an increasing prey population during good pasture conditions and a decreasing population during drought. After the rabbit breeding season, diet changed to other prey and resulted in an annual prey cycle which was similar for foxes and cats. Both predators successfully co-exist in the semi-arid environment by primarily utilising different age groups of the same staple prey and to some extent different supplementary prey. Foxes mainly ate adult rabbits and cats young rabbits. During the drought foxes preyed heavily on adult rabbits; cats ate some rabbits but relied heavily on other food sources. The supplementary prey of foxes were invertebrates, birds, reptiles and carrion; small mammals and fruits opportunely eaten. Invertebrates, birds, reptiles and small mammals were supplementary prey for cats with carrion opportunely eaten.
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“Foxes can consume juveniles of large domestic mammals (Saunders et al. 1993, Gentle 2006) and adults when they are vulnerable (e.g. when giving birth), but large wild and domestic mammals are most likely to be taken as carrion (Catling 1988, Fleming et al. 2016).”
From Variation in red fox Vulpes vulpes diet in five continents (2022) · cites this paper as Catling 1988
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Citations
Cited by
SAUNDERS, G. R., GENTLE, M. N., & DICKMAN, C. R. (2010) · Mammal Review · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2907.2010.00159.x · Cited by 262
Plantinga, E. A., Bosch, G., & Hendriks, W. H. (2011) · British Journal of Nutrition · doi:10.1017/s0007114511002285 · Cited by 166
Variation in the social system of the red fox
Cavallini, P. (1996) · Ethology Ecology & Evolution · doi:10.1080/08927014.1996.9522906 · Cited by 152
Top carnivore decline has cascading effects on scavengers and carrion persistence
Cunningham, C. X., Johnson, C. N., Barmuta, L. A., Hollings, T., Woehler, E. J., & Jones, M. E. (2018) · Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rspb.2018.1582 · Cited by 112
The Chañares Formation: a window to a Middle Triassic tetrapod community
Mancuso, A. C., Gaetano, L. C., Leardi, J. M., Abdala, F., & Arcucci, A. B. (2014) · Lethaia · doi:10.1111/let.12055 · Cited by 71
Metadata
- Authors
- Catling, P. C.
- Venue
- Wildlife Research
- Publisher
- CSIRO Publishing
- Published
- 1988-05-01
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 307-317
- ISSN
- 1035-3712
- 1448-5494
- Cited by
- 108
- References
- 0
- Language
- en
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Similarities and contrasts in the diets of foxes, Vulpes vulpes, and cats, Felis catus, relative to fluctuating prey populations and drought. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1071/wr9880307
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- Catling, P. C. (1988). Similarities and contrasts in the diets of foxes, Vulpes vulpes, and cats, Felis catus, relative to fluctuating prey populations and drought. Wildlife Research. https://doi.org/10.1071/wr9880307
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
