Additionally enabled by economic or nutritional subsidies (Sala et al., 2018) that offset the costs of otherwise unprofitable hunts that apex predators would rather avoid, humans can in some cases rapidly overexploit resources and create ratchet and Allee-Bowen effects that delay recovery of prey (Branch et al., 2006 Kleiven et al., 2019). age 2- to 6-year-old moose Alces alces) that are often most costly for apex predators to hunt (Darimont et al., 2015). adult bluefin tuna Thunnus thynnus), and focus on large reproductive-aged individuals within populations (e.g. Efficient harvesting by trapping, hunting and fishing using tools to subvert prey defences has enabled humans to kill an unprecedented variety of species, to target high trophic level prey that most other predators cannot access (e.g. The ecological role of humans as predators seems to have began in the Pleistocene. Defining where humans fit in trophic webs is challenging and has changed with time as knowledge and technology have developed. Wallach et al. ( 2015) presented some simple traits that define apex predators among carnivora, especially size >34 kg and the capacity for self-regulation.
Are humans apex predators free#
Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.Īpex predators occupy the highest trophic positions in food webs and serve profoundly important roles in ecological and evolutionary processes, shaping and re-shaping the traits of prey and how they interact with one another and the ecosystem. Ultimately, we applied this information to consider management paradigms in which humans could better support the role of, and potentially behave more like, apex predators and discuss the challenges to such coexistence.
Without carefully designed management strategies, such changes can impose harm to ecosystems and their constituents, including humankind. We reviewed evidence for five key effects of predators: natural selection of prey, disease dynamics, landscape effects, carbon cycling and human well-being.Our objective is to contribute to two key ecological themes: the compatibility of human harvesting within ecosystems and management approaches in consideration of the intentional or unintentional loss of predators. In this paper, we investigate whether there is evidence that humans provide complementary services and whether ecosystem services of predators can be maintained by humans where wild predators are lost.Demographically decoupled from prey populations and technologically advanced, humans now impose widespread and significant ecological and evolutionary change. In nearly every ecosystem, human predators (hunters and fishers) exploit animals at extraordinarily high rates, as well as target different age classes and phenotypes, compared to other apex predators.
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