Assessing the Diet of Dingoes from Feces: A Comparison of 3 Methods

Abstract

I assessed diet of the dingo (Canis familiaris dingo) from 2,495 fecal samples using frequency of occurrence of prey types, relative weight of remains of prey types, and biomass of ingested prey types. There were no significant differences between methods in ranking prey types provided that _70 fecal samples/ month were analyzed. The widely used frequency method that is used to understand what and relatively how much is eaten is justified in diet studies of dingoes and other carnivores. Only the biomass ingested method allows an evaluation of the biomass or numbers of particular prey species that are eaten. For dingoes, and probably also for other carnivores, objective adjustments need to be applied to account for differences in size between juvenile and adult large prey species and for differences in the proportion of each age class