When wolves returned to Yellowstone in 1995, no one imagined the predators would literally change the course of rivers in the national park through cascading effects on other animals and plants.
When wolves returned to Yellowstone in 1995, no one imagined the predators would literally change the course of rivers in the national park through cascading effects on other animals and plants. Now, a Stanford University-developed approach holds the promise of forecasting such ecosystem changes as certain species become more prevalent or vanish altogether.
Outlined in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, the rapid, low-cost technique is the first to analyze DNA left behind in animals’ feces to map out complex networks of species interactions in a terrestrial system. It could help redefine conservation as we know it, identify otherwise hard-to-find species and guide a global effort to rewild vast areas through the reintroduction of locally extirpated species.
“It’s not just that we can rapidly capture the biodiversity of an area,” said study lead author Jordana Meyer, a biology PhD candidate in the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences. “We can also quantify the extent of indirect links among species, such as how a specific predator’s behavior affects vegetation in an area. This allows us to measure impacts on species that are essential to the system or particularly vulnerable.”
Read more at Stanford University
Image: A night vision camera trap captured this image of mountain lions drinking from a stream at Stanford's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. (Credit: Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve)
