Roads and roadsides are resource-rich patches in unproductive arid environments.The attractions roads and roadsides offer include greener or more productive vegetation on road verges, and spilt grain and the remains of animals killed by vehicles on the road surface.Here we use counts of road use and roadkill to show that the outcomes of attraction to roads vary greatly among species.Nocturnal mammals are killed more five times more frequently killed than diurnal foragers, and herbivores and insectivores that evolved to flee predators are commonly traffic victims.Among birds, owls were disproportionately common as roadkill.The species that appears to have gained most from roadkill in the Karoo is the Pied Crow whose extended distribution may partly be linked to its increased reliance of scavenged roadkill during the breeding season.
Dean et al. (Thu,) studied this question.