Data from: Cascading impacts of large-carnivore extirpation in an African ecosystem

The world’s largest carnivores are declining and now occupy mere fractions
of their historical ranges. Theory predicts that when apex predators
disappear, large herbivores should become less fearful, occupy new
habitats, and modify those habitats by eating new food plants. Yet
experimental support for this prediction has been difficult to obtain in
large-mammal systems. Following the extirpation of leopards and African
wild dogs from Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park, forest-dwelling
antelopes (bushbuck, Tragelaphus sylvaticus) expanded into treeless
floodplains, where they consumed novel diets and suppressed a common food
plant (waterwort, Bergia mossambicensis). By experimentally simulating
predation risk, we demonstrate that this behavior was reversible. Thus,
whereas anthropogenic predator extinction disrupted a trophic cascade by
enabling rapid differentiation of prey behavior, carnivore restoration may
just as rapidly reestablish that cascade.