Can native predators be used as a stepping stone to reduce prey naivety to novel predators?

Date

2023

Authors

van der Weyde, L.K.
Blumstein, D.T.
Letnic, M.
Tuft, K.
Ryan-Schofield, N.
Moseby, K.E.

Editors

Candolin, U.

Advisors

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Type:

Journal article

Citation

Behavioral Ecology, 2023; 34(1):63-75

Statement of Responsibility

Leanne K. Van der Weyde, Daniel T. Blumstein, Mike Letnic, a Katherine Tuft, Ned Ryan-Schofield, and Katherine E. Moseby

Conference Name

Abstract

Predator naivety negatively affects reintroduction success, and this threat is exacerbated when prey encounters predators with which they have had no evolutionary experience. While methods have been developed to inculcate fear into such predator-naïve individuals, none have been uniformly successful. Exposing ontogenetically- and evolutionary-naïve individuals first to native predators may be an effective stepping stone to improved responses to evolutionarily novel predators. We focused on greater bilbies (Macrotis lagotis) and capitalized on a multi-year mammalian recovery experiment whereby western quolls (Dasyurus geoffroii) were reintroduced into parts of a large fenced reserve that contained a population of naïve bilbies. We quantified a suite of anti-predator behaviors and measures of general wariness across quoll-exposed and quoll-naive bilby populations. We then translocated both quoll-exposed and quoll-naïve individuals into a large enclosure that contained feral cats (Felis catus) and monitored several behaviors. We found that bilbies can respond appropriately to quolls but found only limited support that experience with quolls better-prepared bilbies to respond to cats. Both populations of bilbies rapidly modified their behavior in a similar manner after their reintroduction to a novel environment. These results may have emerged due to insufficient prior exposure to quolls, inappropriate behavioral tests, or insufficient predation risk during cat exposure. Alternatively, quolls and cats are only distantly related and may not share sufficient similarities in their predatory cues or behavior to support such a learning transfer. Testing this stepping stone hypothesis with more closely related predator species and under higher predation risk would be informative.

School/Discipline

Dissertation Note

Provenance

Description

Advance Access publication 11 November 2022

Access Status

Rights

© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved.

License

Call number

Persistent link to this record