School of Life and Environmental Sciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia
School of Life and Environmental Sciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.
Proc Biol Sci. 2018 Aug 22;285(1885):20180857. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2018.0857.
Prey naiveté is a failure to recognize novel predators and thought to cause exaggerated impacts of alien predators on native wildlife. Yet there is equivocal evidence in the literature for native prey naiveté towards aliens. To address this, we conducted a meta-analysis of Australian mammal responses to native and alien predators. Australia has the world's worst record of extinction and declines of native mammals, largely owing to two alien predators introduced more than 150 years ago: the feral cat, , and European red fox, Analysis of 94 responses to predator cues shows that Australian mammals consistently recognize alien foxes as a predation threat, possibly because of thousands of years of experience with another canid predator, the dingo, We also found recognition responses towards cats; however, in four of the seven studies available, these responses were of risk-taking behaviour rather than antipredator behaviour. Our results suggest that a simple failure to recognize alien predators is not behind the ongoing exaggerated impacts of alien predators in Australia. Instead, our results highlight an urgent need to better understand the appropriateness of antipredator responses in prey towards alien predators in order to understand native prey vulnerability.
猎物天真性是指无法识别新型捕食者的现象，被认为会导致外来捕食者对本地野生动物产生过度影响。然而，文献中对于本地猎物是否会对外来物种产生天真性反应存在争议。为了解决这个问题，我们对澳大利亚哺乳动物对本地和外来捕食者的反应进行了荟萃分析。澳大利亚是世界上灭绝和哺乳动物数量下降最严重的地区，这主要归因于 150 多年前引入的两种外来捕食者：野猫 和欧洲红狐 。对捕食者线索的 94 种反应的分析表明，澳大利亚哺乳动物一直将外来狐狸视为捕食威胁，这可能是因为它们数千年来一直与另一种犬科捕食者——野狗——打交道。我们还发现了对猫的识别反应；然而，在现有的七项研究中有四项表明，这些反应是冒险行为，而不是抗捕食行为。我们的研究结果表明，外来捕食者在澳大利亚持续产生过度影响的原因并非简单的无法识别外来捕食者。相反，我们的研究结果强调了迫切需要更好地了解猎物对陌生捕食者的抗捕食反应的适当性，以了解本地猎物的脆弱性。
