Recovery of a marine keystone predator transforms terrestrial predator-prey dynamics.

ABSTRACT: Sea otters (Enhydra lutris) and wolves (Canis lupus) are two apex predators with strong and cascading effects on ecosystem structure and function. After decades of recovery from near extirpation, their ranges now overlap, allowing sea otters and wolves to interact for the first time in the scientific record. We intensively studied wolves during 2015 to 2021 in an island system colonized by sea otters in the 2000s and by wolves in 2013. After wolf colonization, we quantified shifts in foraging behavior with DNA metabarcoding of 689 wolf scats and stable isotope analyses, both revealing a dietary switch from Sitka black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus), the terrestrial in situ primary prey, to sea otters. Here we show an unexpected result of the reintroduction and resto

SUBMITTER: Roffler GH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9945949 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature