Moleón Marcos, Almaraz Pablo, Sánchez-Zapata José A
Departamento de Biología Animal, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain.
PLoS One. 2008 Jun 4;3(6):e2307. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0002307.
Hyperpredation refers to an enhanced predation pressure on a secondary prey due to either an increase in the abundance of a predator population or a sudden drop in the abundance of the main prey. This scarcely documented mechanism has been previously studied in scenarios in which the introduction of a feral prey caused overexploitation of native prey. Here we provide evidence of a previously unreported link between Emergent Infectious Diseases (EIDs) and hyperpredation on a predator-prey community. We show how a viral outbreak caused the population collapse of a host prey at a large spatial scale, which subsequently promoted higher-than-normal predation intensity on a second prey from shared predators. Thus, the disease left a population dynamic fingerprint both in the primary host prey, through direct mortality from the disease, and indirectly in the secondary prey, through hyperpredation. This resulted in synchronized prey population dynamics at a large spatio-temporal scale. We therefore provide evidence for a novel mechanism by which EIDs can disrupt a predator-prey interaction from the individual behavior to the population dynamics. This mechanism can pose a further threat to biodiversity through the human-aided disruption of ecological interactions at large spatial and temporal scales.
超捕食是指由于捕食者种群数量增加或主要猎物数量突然下降，导致对次要猎物的捕食压力增强。这种鲜有文献记载的机制此前曾在野生猎物引入导致本地猎物过度捕猎的情景中得到研究。在此，我们提供了证据，证明新发传染病（EIDs）与捕食者 - 猎物群落中的超捕食之间存在此前未被报道的联系。我们展示了病毒爆发如何在大空间尺度上导致宿主猎物种群崩溃，进而促使共享捕食者对第二种猎物的捕食强度高于正常水平。因此，这种疾病在主要宿主猎物中通过疾病直接致死留下了种群动态印记，在次要猎物中则通过超捕食间接留下印记。这导致了大时空尺度上猎物种群动态的同步。我们因此为一种新机制提供了证据，即新发传染病可从个体行为到种群动态扰乱捕食者 - 猎物相互作用。这种机制可能通过人类在大时空尺度上对生态相互作用的干扰，对生物多样性构成进一步威胁。
