Managing vertebrate pests is a global conservation challenge given their undesirable socio-ecological impacts. Pest management often focuses on the 'average' individual, neglecting individual-level behavioural variation ('personalities') and differences in life histories. These differences affect pest impacts and modify attraction to, or avoidance of, sensory cues. Strategies targeting the average individual may fail to mitigate damage by 'rogues' (individuals causing disproportionate impact) or to target 'recalcitrants' (individuals avoiding standard control measures). Effective management leverages animal behaviours that relate primarily to four core motivations: feeding, fleeing, fighting, and fornication. Management success could be greatly increased by identifying and exploiting individual variation in motivations. We provide explicit suggestions for cue-based tools to manipulate these four motivators, thereby improving pest management outcomes.Looking Beyond the 'Average' Individual in Vertebrate Pest Management Vertebrate pests, including invasive or overabundant predators and herbivores, frequently come into conflict with economic, social, and biodiversity values. Mammalian predators are responsible for some of the most devastating losses to native biodiversity [1] and frequently harm humans, their livestock, and pets, while herbivores can cause agricultural damage, vehicle collisions, and ecosystem-level impacts including overbrowsing [2,3]. Mitigating the impacts of vertebrate pests thus presents one of the major challenges currently facing wildlife managers. Managers require effective strategies to: (i) reduce pest populations (e.g., by attracting individuals to traps or toxic baits), and (ii) deter individuals from sensitive areas or valuable species (e.g., threatened prey or plant species, livestock, agricultural, and forestry sites). Yet, pest control measures are often only partially effective [4,5], with some individuals avoiding lethal control or ignoring deterrents. Attractants and deterrents typically target the 'average' individual in a population, with the goal of maximising the number of animals responding to stimuli. However, the most intractable challenges of vertebrate pest management may occur precisely because some individuals do not behave like the average, and therefore, are not effectively targeted.Within a pest population, individuals exhibit a range of responses to management actions. Deviations from the average response may be transient (e.g., dependent on internal state, body condition, current perceived risk, or density of conspecifics) [6], or may represent persistent, individual-level behavioural differences ('personalities') [7,8]. By understanding the drivers of individual-level differences in behaviour, management can be optimized to target not just the average individual, but the full range of behavioural types within a population. Such insights may be particularly valuable in managing rogue and recalcitrant individuals (see Glossary), two non-exclusive behavioural types t...
Camera trap technology has galvanized the study of predator–prey ecology in wild animal communities by expanding the scale and diversity of predator–prey interactions that can be analysed. While observational data from systematic camera arrays have informed inferences on the spatiotemporal outcomes of predator–prey interactions, the capacity for observational studies to identify mechanistic drivers of species interactions is limited. Experimental study designs that utilize camera traps uniquely allow for testing hypothesized mechanisms that drive predator and prey behaviour, incorporating environmental realism not possible in the laboratory while benefiting from the distinct capacity of camera traps to generate large datasets from multiple species with minimal observer interference. However, such pairings of camera traps with experimental methods remain underutilized. We review recent advances in the experimental application of camera traps to investigate fundamental mechanisms underlying predator–prey ecology and present a conceptual guide for designing experimental camera trap studies. Only 9% of camera trap studies on predator–prey ecology in our review use experimental methods, but the application of experimental approaches is increasing. To illustrate the utility of camera trap‐based experiments using a case study, we propose a study design that integrates observational and experimental techniques to test a perennial question in predator–prey ecology: how prey balance foraging and safety, as formalized by the risk allocation hypothesis. We discuss applications of camera trap‐based experiments to evaluate the diversity of anthropogenic influences on wildlife communities globally. Finally, we review challenges to conducting experimental camera trap studies. Experimental camera trap studies have already begun to play an important role in understanding the predator–prey ecology of free‐living animals, and such methods will become increasingly critical to quantifying drivers of community interactions in a rapidly changing world. We recommend increased application of experimental methods in the study of predator and prey responses to humans, synanthropic and invasive species, and other anthropogenic disturbances.
Olfaction is the primary sense of many mammals and subordinate predators use this sense to detect dominant species, thereby reducing the risk of an encounter and facilitating coexistence. Chemical signals can act as repellents or attractants and may therefore have applications for wildlife management. We devised a field experiment to investigate whether dominant predator (ferret Mustela furo) body odor would alter the behavior of three common mesopredators: stoats (Mustela erminea), hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus), and ship rats (Rattus rattus). We predicted that apex predator odor would lead to increased detections, and our results support this hypothesis as predator kairomones (interspecific olfactory messages that benefit the receiver) provoked "eavesdropping" behavior by mesopredators. Stoats exhibited the most pronounced responses, with kairomones significantly increasing the number of observations and the time spent at a site, so that their occupancy estimates changed from rare to widespread. Behavioral responses to predator odors can therefore be exploited for conservation and this avenue of research has not yet been extensively explored. A long-life lure derived from apex predator kairomones could have practical value, especially when there are plentiful resources that reduce the efficiency of food-based lures. Our results have application for pest management in New Zealand and the technique of using kairomones to monitor predators could have applications for conservation efforts worldwide.
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