Red-billed oxpeckers feed almost exclusively on what they can collect from the skin of large African mammals. This includes ticks and other ectoparasites, but also dead skin and blood of the mammal. The attached image shows a red-billed oxpecker sitting on the back of a warthog with a tick in its bill. A recent study found that the depletion of African mammals due to habitat loss and hunting leads to declines in oxpeckers. Researchers were interested in whether the nature of the interaction between African mammals and oxpeckers was context-dependent. They compared the effect of removal of oxpeckers in two areas in which the number of ticks on the mammals differed. Given the data described in the introduction to this section, what effect do African mammals have on oxpeckers a) Positive b) negative c) neutral
Red-billed oxpeckers feed almost exclusively on what they can collect from the skin of large African mammals. This includes ticks and other ectoparasites, but also dead skin and blood of the mammal. The attached image shows a red-billed oxpecker sitting on the back of a warthog with a tick in its bill. A recent study found that the depletion of African mammals due to habitat loss and hunting leads to declines in oxpeckers.
Researchers were interested in whether the nature of the interaction between African mammals and oxpeckers was context-dependent. They compared the effect of removal of oxpeckers in two areas in which the number of ticks on the mammals differed.
Given the data described in the introduction to this section, what effect do African mammals have on oxpeckers
a) Positive
b) negative
c) neutral
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