Should meat-eaters guide conservation?.
Researchers disagree over whether predators reflect biodiversity.
Ecologists are divided over whether the predators inhabiting an ecosystem are a good guide to its total biodiversity. The debate may lead conservationists to reassess how they prioritize their efforts and design nature reserves.
Conservationists have long sought groups of species whose diversity reflects the total biodiversity in an area. Such indicators can help identify the places most in need of protection.
Based on their analyses of birds of prey, Fabrizio Sergio, at the Doñana Biological Research Station in Spain, and his colleagues have argued that top predators could be just such indicators1,2. Working in the Italian Alps, they have found that the number of birds of prey in a place is a good reflection of other species living there.
This seems to make sense. Top predators such as raptors and big cats need both large areas of habitat and healthy prey populations. And as predators have long been poster children for conservation, it would be handy if protecting them benefitted the habitat as a whole.
But, writing in the Journal of Applied Ecology3, a team of ecologists — led by Mar Cabeza at the University of Helsinki — argues that it’s a mistake to generalize from studies of birds of prey, and that in general top predators give an uneven picture of biodiversity.
“To suggest that top predators make good biodiversity indicators when the research was conducted on raptors alone in a small region is dangerous,” says Cabeza. “We must conduct further studies before making any recommendations.”
El artículo completo en:
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070730/pf/070730-10_pf.html
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