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Using effect size benchmarks to assess when alien impacts are actually alien
Alien predators have on average twice the impact on native prey populations than do native predators, and are a severe threat to wildlife globally. Manipulation experiments can be used to quantify the impact of an alien predator on its prey population/s, but unless the results are compared to benchm...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5269578/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28128305 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep38627 |
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author | Smith, Helen M. Dickman, Chris R. Banks, Peter B. |
author_facet | Smith, Helen M. Dickman, Chris R. Banks, Peter B. |
author_sort | Smith, Helen M. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Alien predators have on average twice the impact on native prey populations than do native predators, and are a severe threat to wildlife globally. Manipulation experiments can be used to quantify the impact of an alien predator on its prey population/s, but unless the results are compared to benchmarks, it is unclear whether this impact is indeed greater than that of a native predator. Here we use the Australian garden skink Lampropholis delicata and alien black rat Rattus rattus to test if black rats are an additive source of predation for the skink, and to judge whether the effect size of rat-impact on the skink represents that of an alien or native predator. We used replicated experiments to exclude black rats at local and landscape scales to test how rats affect skink activity and trapping frequency. Both manipulations had positive effects on skinks, however, the population-level effect size was lower than that described for alien predators but similar to that expected for native predators. We suggest that Australian skinks may respond appropriately to predatory alien rats because they coevolved with endemic Rattus species. This adds novel insights into the varying levels of impact that alien predators have on native prey. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5269578 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-52695782017-02-01 Using effect size benchmarks to assess when alien impacts are actually alien Smith, Helen M. Dickman, Chris R. Banks, Peter B. Sci Rep Article Alien predators have on average twice the impact on native prey populations than do native predators, and are a severe threat to wildlife globally. Manipulation experiments can be used to quantify the impact of an alien predator on its prey population/s, but unless the results are compared to benchmarks, it is unclear whether this impact is indeed greater than that of a native predator. Here we use the Australian garden skink Lampropholis delicata and alien black rat Rattus rattus to test if black rats are an additive source of predation for the skink, and to judge whether the effect size of rat-impact on the skink represents that of an alien or native predator. We used replicated experiments to exclude black rats at local and landscape scales to test how rats affect skink activity and trapping frequency. Both manipulations had positive effects on skinks, however, the population-level effect size was lower than that described for alien predators but similar to that expected for native predators. We suggest that Australian skinks may respond appropriately to predatory alien rats because they coevolved with endemic Rattus species. This adds novel insights into the varying levels of impact that alien predators have on native prey. Nature Publishing Group 2017-01-27 /pmc/articles/PMC5269578/ /pubmed/28128305 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep38627 Text en Copyright © 2017, The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
spellingShingle | Article Smith, Helen M. Dickman, Chris R. Banks, Peter B. Using effect size benchmarks to assess when alien impacts are actually alien |
title | Using effect size benchmarks to assess when alien impacts are actually alien |
title_full | Using effect size benchmarks to assess when alien impacts are actually alien |
title_fullStr | Using effect size benchmarks to assess when alien impacts are actually alien |
title_full_unstemmed | Using effect size benchmarks to assess when alien impacts are actually alien |
title_short | Using effect size benchmarks to assess when alien impacts are actually alien |
title_sort | using effect size benchmarks to assess when alien impacts are actually alien |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5269578/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28128305 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep38627 |
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