Abstract:
:Apex predators can limit the abundance and behaviour of mesopredators, thereby reducing predation on smaller species. We know less about whether native apex predators are effective in suppressing invasive mesopredators, a major global driver of vertebrate extinctions. We use the severe disease-induced decline of an apex predator, the Tasmanian devil, as a natural experiment to test whether devils limit abundance of invasive feral cats and in turn protect smaller native prey. Cat abundance was c. 58% higher where devils had declined, which in turn negatively affected a smaller native prey species. Devils had a stronger limiting effect on cats than on a native mesopredator, suggesting apex predators may have stronger suppressive effects on evolutionarily naive species than coevolved species. Our results highlight how disease in one species can affect the broader ecosystem. We show that apex predators not only regulate native species but can also confer resistance to the impacts of invasive populations. Apex predators could therefore be a powerful but underutilised tool to prevent biodiversity loss.
journal_name
Ecol Lettjournal_title
Ecology lettersauthors
Cunningham CX,Johnson CN,Jones MEdoi
10.1111/ele.13473subject
Has Abstractpub_date
2020-04-01 00:00:00pages
711-721issue
4eissn
1461-023Xissn
1461-0248journal_volume
23pub_type
信件相关文献
ECOLOGY LETTERS文献大全abstract::Acquisition and allocation of resources are central to life-history theory. However, empirical work typically focuses only on allocation despite the fact that relationships between fitness components may be governed by differences in the ability of individuals to acquire resources across environments. Here, we outline...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/ele.12047
更新日期:2013-03-01 00:00:00
abstract::The impacts of climate change on forest net biomass change are poorly understood but critical for predicting forest's contribution to the global carbon cycle. Recent studies show climate change-associated net biomass declines in mature forest plots. The representativeness of these plots for regional forests, however, ...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/ele.12653
更新日期:2016-09-01 00:00:00
abstract::Dispersal and the underlying movement behaviour are processes of pivotal importance for understanding and predicting metapopulation and metacommunity dynamics. Generally, dispersal decisions are condition-dependent and rely on information in the broad sense, like the presence of conspecifics. However, studies on metac...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 信件
doi:10.1111/ele.12475
更新日期:2015-09-01 00:00:00
abstract::Progressive habitat transformation causes global changes in landscape biodiversity patterns, but can be hard to quantify. Rarefaction/extrapolation approaches can quantify within-habitat biodiversity, but may not be useful for cases in which one habitat type is progressively transformed into another habitat type. To q...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/ele.13322
更新日期:2019-11-01 00:00:00
abstract::The future of tropical forest biodiversity depends more than ever on the effective management of human-modified landscapes, presenting a daunting challenge to conservation practitioners and land use managers. We provide a critical synthesis of the scientific insights that guide our understanding of patterns and proces...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章,评审
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2009.01294.x
更新日期:2009-06-01 00:00:00
abstract::We reconcile the findings of Holmes et al. (Ecology Letters, 10, 2007, 1182) that 95% confidence intervals for quasi-extinction risk were narrow for many vertebrates of conservation concern, with previous theory predicting wide confidence intervals. We extend previous theory, concerning the precision of quasi-extincti...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 评论,杂志文章
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2008.01211.x
更新日期:2008-08-01 00:00:00
abstract::Intrinsic processes are assumed to underlie life history expression and trade-offs, but extrinsic inputs are theorised to shift trait expression and mask trade-offs within species. Here, we explore application of this theory across species. We do this based on parentally induced embryo temperature as an extrinsic inpu...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 信件
doi:10.1111/ele.12103
更新日期:2013-06-01 00:00:00
abstract::How strongly natural populations are regulated has a long history of debate in ecology. Here, we discuss concepts of population regulation appropriate for stochastic population dynamics. We then analyse two large collections of data sets with autoregressive-moving average (ARMA) models, using model selection technique...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2009.01393.x
更新日期:2010-01-01 00:00:00
abstract::Partial migration, whereby only a fraction of the population migrates, is thought to be the most common type of migration in the animal kingdom, and can have important ecological and evolutionary consequences. Despite this, the factors that influence which individuals migrate and which remain resident are poorly under...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 信件
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2011.01648.x
更新日期:2011-09-01 00:00:00
abstract::To estimate species loss from habitat destruction, ecologists typically use species-area relationships, but this approach neglects the spatial pattern of habitat fragmentation. Here, we provide new, easily applied, analytical methods that place upper and lower bounds on immediate species loss at any spatial scale and ...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/ele.12943
更新日期:2018-06-01 00:00:00
abstract::The tortuosity of the track taken by an animal searching for food profoundly affects search efficiency, which should be optimised to maximise net energy gain. Models examining this generally describe movement as a series of straight steps interspaced by turns, and implicitly assume no turn costs. We used both empirica...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/ele.12149
更新日期:2013-09-01 00:00:00
abstract::Metabolism fuels all of life's activities, from biochemical reactions to ecological interactions. According to two intensely debated theories, body size affects metabolism via geometrical influences on the transport of resources and wastes. However, these theories differ crucially in whether the size dependence of met...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/ele.12334
更新日期:2014-10-01 00:00:00
abstract::The Metabolic Theory of Ecology predicts that the slope of the rate-temperature relationship, E, remains consistent across traits and organisms, acting as a major determinant of large-scale ecological patterns. Although E has recently been shown to vary systematically, we have a poor understanding of its ecological si...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 信件
doi:10.1111/ele.12013
更新日期:2013-01-01 00:00:00
abstract::Biodiversity studies are sensitive to well-recognised temporal and spatial scale dependencies. Cross-study syntheses may inflate these influences by collating studies that vary widely in the numbers and sizes of sampling plots. Here we evaluate sources of inaccuracy and imprecision in study-level and cross-study estim...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章,meta分析,评审
doi:10.1111/ele.13641
更新日期:2021-02-01 00:00:00
abstract::Intra- and interspecific plant-plant interactions are fundamental to patterns of community assembly and to the mixture effects observed in biodiversity studies. Although much research has been conducted at the species level, very little is understood about how genetic variation within and among interacting species may...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2011.01710.x
更新日期:2012-01-01 00:00:00
abstract::Accurate predictions of soil C feedbacks to climate change depend on an improved understanding of responses of soil C pools and C use by soil microbial groups. We assessed soil and microbial C in a 7-year manipulation of CO2 and warming in a semi-arid grassland. Continuous field isotopic labelling under elevated CO2 f...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/ele.13140
更新日期:2018-11-01 00:00:00
abstract::Tropical soils contain huge carbon stocks, which climate warming is projected to reduce by stimulating organic matter decomposition, creating a positive feedback that will promote further warming. Models predict that the loss of carbon from warming soils will be mediated by microbial physiology, but no empirical data ...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 信件
doi:10.1111/ele.13379
更新日期:2019-11-01 00:00:00
abstract::Dispersal is a key ecological process that is strongly influenced by both phenotype and environment. Here, we show that juvenile environment influences dispersal not only by shaping individual phenotypes, but also by changing the phenotypes of neighbouring conspecifics, which influence how individuals disperse. We use...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 信件
doi:10.1111/ele.13166
更新日期:2019-01-01 00:00:00
abstract::Many experimental studies have quantified how the effects of competition vary with habitat productivity, with the results often interpreted in terms of the ideas of Grime and Tilman. Unfortunately, these ideas are not relevant to many experiments, and so we develop an appropriate resource competition model and use thi...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/ele.12037
更新日期:2013-03-01 00:00:00
abstract::Predicting long-term trends in forest growth requires accurate characterisation of how the relationship between forest productivity and climatic stress varies across climatic regimes. Using a network of over two million tree-ring observations spanning North America and a space-for-time substitution methodology, we for...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/ele.12650
更新日期:2016-09-01 00:00:00
abstract::For decades, ecologists have hypothesised that exposure to plant secondary compounds (PSCs) modifies herbivore-associated microbial community composition. This notion has not been critically evaluated in wild mammalian herbivores on evolutionary timescales. We investigated responses of the microbial communities of two...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2012.01822.x
更新日期:2012-09-01 00:00:00
abstract::Nitrogen (N) effects on ecosystem carbon (C) budgets are critical to understand as C sequestration is considered as a mechanism to offset anthropogenic CO(2) emissions. Interactions between aboveground C and N cycling are more clearly characterized than belowground processes. Through synthesizing data from multiple te...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2010.01482.x
更新日期:2010-07-01 00:00:00
abstract::Plant growth can be limited by resource acquisition and defence against consumers, leading to contrasting trade-off possibilities. The competition-defence hypothesis posits a trade-off between competitive ability and defence against enemies (e.g. herbivores and pathogens). The growth-defence hypothesis suggests that s...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/ele.12078
更新日期:2013-04-01 00:00:00
abstract::Trait-based approaches to community structure are increasingly used in terrestrial ecology. We show that such an approach, augmented by a mechanistic analysis of trade-offs among functional traits, can be successfully used to explain community composition of marine phytoplankton along environmental gradients. Our anal...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2007.01117.x
更新日期:2007-12-01 00:00:00
abstract::Although dispersal distance plays a major role in determining whether organisms will reach new habitats, empirical data on the environmental factors that affect dispersal distance are lacking. Population density and kin competition are two factors theorised to increase dispersal distance. Using the two-spotted spider ...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/ele.12057
更新日期:2013-04-01 00:00:00
abstract::The canonical factors typically thought to determine herbivore community structure often explain only a small fraction of the variation in herbivore abundance and diversity. We tested how macronutrients and relatively understudied micronutrients interacted to influence the structure of insect herbivore (orthopteran) c...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/ele.13127
更新日期:2018-10-01 00:00:00
abstract::The ecological and evolutionary consequences of extreme events are poorly understood. Here, we tested predictions about species persistence and population genomic change in aquatic insects in 14 Colorado mountain streams across a hydrological disturbance gradient caused by a one in 500-year rainfall event. Taxa persis...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/ele.12918
更新日期:2018-04-01 00:00:00
abstract::In the short-term heterotrophic soil respiration is strongly and positively related to temperature. In the long-term, its response to temperature is uncertain. One reason for this is because in field experiments increases in respiration due to warming are relatively short-lived. The explanations proposed for this ephe...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2008.01251.x
更新日期:2008-12-01 00:00:00
abstract::The evolutionary dynamics of pathogens are critically important for disease outcomes, prevalence and emergence. In this study we investigate ecological conditions that may promote the long-term maintenance of virulence polymorphisms in pathogen populations. Recent theory predicts that evolution towards increased virul...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 信件
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2011.01687.x
更新日期:2011-11-01 00:00:00
abstract::Shifts in species' phenology in response to climate change have wide-ranging consequences for ecological systems. However, significant variability in species' responses, together with limited data, frustrates efforts to forecast the consequences of ongoing phenological changes. Herein, we use a case study of three Nor...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 信件
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2012.01765.x
更新日期:2012-06-01 00:00:00