Files
Abstract
Despite being one of the largest anthropogenic releases of radionuclide contamination in history, the ecological ramifications of the 2011 nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan remain largely unknown. To understand how the evacuation and shift in human activity has affected wildlife communities, I characterized the vertebrate scavenging community in the FEZ and surrounding unaffected areas and tested the effects of carcass size, habitat, and human activity on the composition and efficiency of vertebrate scavengers. Despite the radiological contamination, the FEZ supports a diverse and efficient scavenger community. I then focused on scavengers for which limited data exist – snakes – and investigated their spatial ecology and factors influencing radiocesium accumulation and dose. My results demonstrate snakes accumulate highly variable radiocesium concentrations depending on local environmental contamination levels. Variation in habitat use and movement behavior substantially influences dose estimates, but accounting for environmental contamination within the home range can reduce uncertainty in dose estimations.