Sentences with word «mesopredator»

Wilcove wanted to test the effect of mesopredator release on songbird nest predation — what can be thought of as the empty nest hypothesis.

Interactions between a Top Order predator and exotic mesopredators in the Australian rangelands.

Feral cats, and any other mesopredators present, can reach very high densities in the absence of the top predator.

One week later he measured the percentage of experimental nests raided by mesopredators.

Soulé hypothesized that falling coyote numbers in an area being developed by humans would result in the release of native and exotic mesopredators such as raccoons and housecats.

Introduction Debate rages in Australia about the merits of using apex predators (dingoes Canis lupus dingo) to limit the impact of introduced mesopredators, which have been identified as the primary cause of Australia's mass mammal extinction since European arrival.

In these cases mesopredator release reduced biodiversity and demonstrated the ecological importance of the alternative food web pathways created by keystones.

Soulé's mesopredator study had been based on a statistical correlation showing the trophic cascade coyotes were producing, but Crooks confirmed this empirically using radio - collars.

Accordingly, Crooks and Soulé concluded that coyotes were ecologically beneficial because they controlled mesopredators that preyed on birds while rarely preying on birds themselves.

One of the most powerful indirect effects of predation involves mesopredator release.

This type of action causes mesopredators, such as coyotes, to increase and puts abnormal pressure on smaller species, such as game birds, which decline and can become extinct.

These lesser mesopredators include cheetahs and African wild dogs.

Top predators like lions keep mesopredators in line.

And that fear is another way mesopredators are kept in check as the smaller animals take action to avoid the top predator's threatening advances

Systematic predator loss may also tend to cause increases in disease risk, although mesopredator release could counter such a pattern in some systems [74].

The problems get worse because, while very few people are stupid enough to intentionally feed wild coyotes, or wild mesopredators like skunks or opossums, great hordes of people are stupid enough to feed feral cats, or to let their pet cats roam freely outdoors.

The fact that coyotes are preferable to cats goes beyond mesopredator release, though.

[FN3] Unfortunately, their popularity as a companion species to humans has led to many millions of this efficient mesopredator roaming free in the U.S., either because their owners allow them to or because they are homeless.

And even if FWS is successful at removing cats from some locations, the IPMP / EA fails to take into account the risk of mesopredator release — the inevitable spike in non-native rodent populations — and its impact on the native species the IPMP / EA aims to protect.

When coyotes inhabit an area, densities of feral cats and other mesopredators are much lower.

As Courchamp et al. explain, «although counter-intuitive, eradication of introduced superpredators, such as feral domestic cats, is not always the best solution to protect endemic prey when introduced mesopredators, such as rats, are also present.»

Before long, scientists were realizing that much of the country was suffering from a bad case of mesopredator release.

Coyotes act as keystone predators in some systems and mesopredators in others.

Without that control, the midsized carnivores ran wild in an orgy of predation that Soulé termed «mesopredator release.»

Since this study, mesopredator release has been identified in the Dakotas, where coyote absence caused the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) population to surge, making survival far more challenging for prairie ducks.

In Yellowstone, where wolves are keystones, coyotes take the mesopredator role.

This led Wilcove to link nest predation to mesopredator release.

Similarly in Texas, coyote removal led to an increase in five species of mesopredators and a decrease in game birds.

Defined as medium - sized predators, mesopredators are controlled by top predators — often by direct mortality, as we have seen, but also via competition for shared resources.

So what he was observing with the birds was the indirect effect of coyote absence (more cats) and thus a mesopredator release.

Prey theft may compromise energetic budgets of mesopredators, such as cheetahs and wild dogs, which are susceptible to competition from larger carnivores.

Therefore, not all mesopredators are energetically constrained by direct competition.

A related concept, the mesopredator release hypothesis, predicts that the removal of apex predators leads to the irruption of mesopredators with concomitant declines in the abundances of their prey owing to elevated rates of predation by mesopredators [10].

In other contexts, however, cats have been shown to play the dominant predator role with non-native rats becoming the mesopredators.

For Soulé et al., coyotes were the dominant predators, while cats were the mesopredators.

Mesopredator Release In its IPMP / EA, FWS refers to two often - cited papers [18, 19] as evidence of cats disrupting native ecosystems, but fails to acknowledge the larger point made by the authors: the mesopredator release phenomenon.

This paper, a brief review and critique of the essay «Critical Assessment of Claims Regarding Management of Feral Cats by Trap - Neuter - Return» by Travis Longcore, Catherine Rich, and Lauren M. Sullivan, now includes sections on Toxoplasma gondii, the mesopredator release phenomenon, and more.

Courchamp, F., Langlais, M., and Sugihara, G., «Cats protecting birds: modelling the mesopredator release effect.»

The issue Debate is raging in Australia surrounding the merits of using apex predators (dingoes C. lupus dingo) to conserve native fauna by reducing the abundance or area of impact of mesopredators (introduced red foxes Vulpes vulpes and feral cats Felis catus), which have largely been

Courchamp, F., M. Langlais, and G. Sugihara, Cats protecting birds: modelling the mesopredator release effect.

Coyotes in urban and suburban habitats are the top predator; cats are mesopredators, along with raccoons, skunks, and various other critters of similar size and behavior.

Mesopredator release is a general phenomenon which has been demonstrated in other top predator - mesopredator - prey systems, not just coyote - cat - bird, and in most of them the removal of the top predator causes a cascade leading to localized extinction of certain prey species.

Cats and coyotes exhibit a syndrome that ecologists call «mesopredator release.»

But USFWS doesn't even mention the risk of mesopredator release, despite the fact that — should the population of free - roaming cats be sufficiently reduced — the situation in the Keys suggests that such an outcome is actually quite likely.