Data from: Australian native mammals recognise and respond to alien predators: a meta-analysis

Prey naiveté is a failure to recognise novel predators and thought to cause exaggerated impacts of alien predators on native wildlife. Yet there is equivocal evidence in the literature for native prey naiveté towards aliens. To address this, we conducted a meta-analysis of Australian mammal responses to native and alien predators. Australia has the world’s worst record of extinction and declines of native mammals, largely due to two alien predators introduced some 150 years ago: the feral cat, Felis catus, and European red fox, Vulpes vulpes. Analysis of 94 responses to predator cues show that Australian mammals consistently recognise alien foxes as a predation threat, possibly because of thousands of years experience with another canid predator, the dingo, Canis lupus dingo. We also found consistent recogntion responses towards feral cats, however in 4 of the 7 studies available, these responses were of risk-taking behaviour rather than antipredator behaviour. Our results suggest that a simple failure to recognise alien predators is not behind the ongoing exaggerated impacts of alien predators in Australia. Instead, our results highlight an urgent need to better understand the appropriateness of antipredator responses in prey towards alien predators in order to understand native prey vulnerability.

猎物天真性（prey naiveté）指猎物无法识别新型捕食者的现象，被认为会加剧外来捕食者对本土野生动物的危害。然而，现有文献中关于本土猎物对入侵捕食者存在识别缺失的相关证据却模棱两可。为解决这一研究缺口，我们针对澳大利亚本土哺乳动物对本土及外来捕食者的响应开展了一项元分析研究。澳大利亚是全球本土哺乳动物灭绝与种群衰退情况最严重的国家，这主要归咎于约150年前引入的两种外来捕食者：野化家猫（Felis catus）与欧洲红狐（Vulpes vulpes）。通过对94组捕食者信号响应数据的分析，我们发现澳大利亚本土哺乳动物能够稳定识别外来红狐的捕食威胁，这可能源于它们与另一犬科捕食者——澳洲野犬（Canis lupus dingo）长达数千年的共存经历。我们同时发现本土哺乳动物对野化家猫也存在稳定的识别响应，但在已纳入的7项研究中，有4项的响应表现为冒险行为而非反捕食行为。本研究结果表明，单纯的捕食者识别缺失并非导致澳大利亚外来捕食者持续造成严重危害的核心原因。反之，我们的研究结果凸显了一项迫切需求：为阐明本土猎物的脆弱性机制，亟需深入解析猎物对外来捕食者所做出的反捕食响应是否适配当前的捕食压力。