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Recolonizing Carnivores and Naïve Prey: Conservation Lessons from Pleistocene Extinctions
Joel Berger,1*Jon E. Swenson,2Inga-Lill Persson3
The current extinction of many of Earth's large terrestrial
carnivores has left some extant prey species lacking knowledgeabout
contemporary predators, a situation roughly parallel tothat 10,000 to
50,000 years ago, when naïve animals first encounteredcolonizing human hunters. Along present-day carnivore recolonizationfronts, brown (also called grizzly) bears killed predator-naïveadult moose at disproportionately high rates in Scandinavia, andmoose
mothers who lost juveniles to recolonizing wolves in NorthAmerica's
Yellowstone region developed hypersensitivity to wolfhowls. Although
prey that had been unfamiliar with dangerous predatorsfor as few as 50 to 130 years were highly vulnerable to initialencounters, behavioral
adjustments to reduce predation transpiredwithin a single generation.
The fact that at least one prey speciesquickly learns to be wary of
restored carnivores should negatefears about localized prey
extinction.
1 Program in Ecology, Evolution, and
Conservation Biology, University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89512, USA, and
Wildlife Conservation Society, Moose, WY 83012, USA.
2 Department of Biology and Nature Conservation,
Agricultural University of Norway, Box 5014, N-As, Norway, and
Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, Tungastella 2, N-7485,
Trondheim, Norway.
3 Department of Zoology,
University of Oslo, Box 1040 Blindern, Oslo, Norway.
*
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
berger{at}unr.edu
Present address: Department of Animal Ecology, Swedish
University of Agricultural Sciences, S-90183 Umea, Sweden.
`Different strokes for different folks': geographically isolated strains of Lymnaea stagnalis only respond to sympatric predators and have different memory forming capabilities.
