Predator species are disproportionately vulnerable to extinction as a result of human activities. An EU-funded project has explored the importance of predator species’ characteristics to determine the impacts of extinction on ecosystems.
Loss of predators can trigger changes to an ecosystem whereby the elimination of one species leads to a chain reaction that reshapes a whole habitat. Understanding the consequences of predator biodiversity loss is thus crucial to predicting how ecosystems will respond to the loss of biodiversity in the real world.
Further details: Impacts of predator biodiversity loss revealed