How Nature-Based Tourism Might Increase Prey Vulnerabiliy to Predators

Tourism can be deleterious for wildlife because it triggers behavioral changes in individuals with cascading effects on populations and communities. Among these behavioral changes, animals around humans often reduce their fearfulness and antipredator responses towards humans. A straightforward predi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Trends in ecology & evolution (Amsterdam) 2015-12, Vol.30 (12), p.755-765
Main Authors: Geffroy, Benjamin, Samia, Diogo S. M., Bessa, Eduardo, Blumstein, Daniel T.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Computer Science
Life Sciences
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Tourism can be deleterious for wildlife because it triggers behavioral changes in individuals with cascading effects on populations and communities. Among these behavioral changes, animals around humans often reduce their fearfulness and antipredator responses towards humans. A straightforward prediction is that habituation to humans associated with tourism would negatively influence reaction to predators. This could happen indirectly, where human presence decreases the number of natural predators and thus prey become less wary, or directly, where human-habituated individuals become bolder and thus more vulnerable to predation. Building on ideas from the study of traits associated with domestication and urbanization, we develop a framework to understand how behavioral changes associated with nature-based tourism can impact individual fitness, and thus the demographic trajectory of a population.
ISSN:0169-5347
1872-8383
DOI:10.1016/j.tree.2015.09.010