Avoidance of carnivore carcasses by vertebrate scavengers enables colonization by a diverse community of carrion insects.

Carrion resources sustain a complex and diverse community of both vertebrate and invertebrate scavengers, either obligate or facultative. However, although carrion ecology has received increasing scientific attention in recent years, our understanding of carrion partitioning in natural conditions is severely limited as most studies are restricted either to the vertebrate or the insect scavenger communities. Moreover, carnivore carcasses have been traditionally neglected as study model.

Carnivore carcasses are avoided by carnivores.

Ecologists have traditionally focused on herbivore carcasses as study models in scavenging research. However, some observations of scavengers avoiding feeding on carnivore carrion suggest that different types of carrion may lead to differential pressures. Untested assumptions about carrion produced at different trophic levels could therefore lead ecologists to overlook important evolutionary processes and their ecological consequences.