Fear of humans as apex predators has landscape‐scale impacts from mountain lions to mice

Apex predators such as large carnivores can have cascading, landscape‐scale impacts across wildlife communities, which could result largely from the fear they inspire, although this has yet to be experimentally demonstrated. Humans have supplanted large carnivores as apex predators in many systems,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecology letters 2019-10, Vol.22 (10), p.1578-1586
Main Authors: Suraci, Justin P., Clinchy, Michael, Zanette, Liana Y., Wilmers, Christopher C., Grether, Greg
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Anthropogenic factors
California
Carnivora
Carnivores
Communities
Ecology of fear
Ecosystem
Fear
Female
Foraging habitats
Habitat utilization
human impacts
Human influences
Humans
landscape of fear
large‐scale field manipulation
Lynx
Male
Mephitidae
Mice
Mountains
Opossums
Playback
playback experiment
Predators
Predatory Behavior
Puma
Sound
Trophic levels
Wildlife
Wildlife habitats
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Summary:Apex predators such as large carnivores can have cascading, landscape‐scale impacts across wildlife communities, which could result largely from the fear they inspire, although this has yet to be experimentally demonstrated. Humans have supplanted large carnivores as apex predators in many systems, and similarly pervasive impacts may now result from fear of the human ‘super predator’. We conducted a landscape‐scale playback experiment demonstrating that the sound of humans speaking generates a landscape of fear with pervasive effects across wildlife communities. Large carnivores avoided human voices and moved more cautiously when hearing humans, while medium‐sized carnivores became more elusive and reduced foraging. Small mammals evidently benefited, increasing habitat use and foraging. Thus, just the sound of a predator can have landscape‐scale effects at multiple trophic levels. Our results indicate that many of the globally observed impacts on wildlife attributed to anthropogenic activity may be explained by fear of humans.
ISSN:1461-023X
1461-0248
DOI:10.1111/ele.13344