The corrupted carnivore: how humans are rearranging the return of the carnivore-scavenger relationship

PAULI, JONATHAN N.; DONADIO, E; LAMBERTUCCI, S A

ECOLOGY

ECOLOGICAL SOC AMER

Año: 2018

0012-9658

After centuries of declining abundance and distribution, apex carnivores are repatriating parts of their historical range across Europe, North America, South America, and Asia. These recoveries are not occurring only in remote wildlands, but are increasingly found in landscapes featuring a strong human presence. With their return to these landscapes, there is hope that many of the services carnivores provide will return too. Indeed, even at low densities, carnivores can regulate prey populations, induce trophic cascades that release plants from herbivory, control mesopredators, reduce and confine disease outbreaks, improve human health, control exotic species, enhance carbon storage and support a more diverse community of organisms. These are lofty expectations for this guild, some of which will be realized. Given that in many instances carnivore recolonization will be to strongly modified and even entirely novel landscapes, it is likely that the functional role of carnivores will be importantly altered, only partially realized (Moss et al. 2016), or in some cases, completely different. Nowhere will this altered role of carnivores be more evident in their relationship with obligate scavengers.