Affiliation:
1. School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, The University of Queensland, Gatton, Queensland, Australia
Abstract
Colman
et al.
(2014
Proc. R. Soc. B
281
, 20133094. (
doi:10.1098/rspb.2013.3094
)) recently argued that observed positive relationships between dingoes and small mammals were a result of top-down processes whereby lethal dingo control reduced dingoes and increased mesopredators and herbivores, which then suppressed small mammals. Here, I show that the prerequisite negative effects of dingo control on dingoes were not shown, and that the same positive relationships observed may simply represent well-known bottom-up processes whereby more generalist predators are found in places with more of their preferred prey. Identification of top-predator control-induced trophic cascades first requires demonstration of some actual effect of control on predators, typically possible only through manipulative experiments with the ability to identify cause and effect.
Subject
General Agricultural and Biological Sciences,General Environmental Science,General Immunology and Microbiology,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology,General Medicine
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