Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive (CEFE), UMR 5175 CNRS - Université de Montpellier - Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3 - EPHE - IRD, Montpellier, France.
Laboratoire d'Écologie Alpine (LECA), UMR 5553 Université Grenoble Alpes - Université Savoie Mont-Blanc - CNRS, Le Bourget-du-Lac, France.
Commun Biol. 2022 Mar 4;5(1):208. doi: 10.1038/s42003-022-03151-z.
Fear effects of predators on prey distributions are seldom considered in marine environments, especially over large spatial scales and in conservation contexts. To fill these major gaps, we tested the Seascape of Fear Hypothesis in the Benguela marine ecosystem off South Africa. Using electronic tracking data, we showed that Cape gannets and their predator, the Cape fur seal, co-occurred in daytime and competed with fisheries within coastal areas. At night, gannets are particularly vulnerable to seals, and 28% of the birds returned to the safety of their breeding colony. The remaining 72% slept at the sea surface, but shifted to offshore areas with lower seal attendance, reducing predation risk by 25%. Overall, our integrative study demonstrates how fear and competition shape the seascape of threatened Cape gannets within a marine environment perturbed by climate change and overfishing. Such knowledge has strong implications for the design of marine protected areas.
在海洋环境中，特别是在大的空间尺度和保护背景下，人们很少考虑捕食者对猎物分布的恐惧效应。为了填补这些主要空白，我们在南非附近的本格拉海洋生态系统中检验了“恐惧景观假说”。利用电子跟踪数据，我们表明，南非海雕和它们的捕食者南非海狗在白天共同出现，并与沿海地区的渔业竞争。在夜间，海雕特别容易受到海豹的攻击，有 28%的鸟类返回繁殖地的安全地带。剩下的 72%在海面睡觉，但转移到海豹活动较少的近海地区，从而降低了 25%的捕食风险。总的来说，我们的综合研究表明，在受气候变化和过度捕捞影响的海洋环境中，恐惧和竞争是如何塑造受威胁的南非海雕的景观的。这种知识对于海洋保护区的设计具有重要意义。
