Reintroducing apex predators: the perils of muddling guilds and taxocenoses.

Abstract

Wolf & Ripple [1] make the case for ‘large carnivore' conservation through reintroductions. The selected species, however, were neither necessarily apex predators nor carnivores, but a subset of the mammalian order Carnivora, including those ranging from insectivores–omnivores (sloth bear, Melursus ursinus [2,3]; sun bear, Helarctos malayanus [4]) to herbivores–omnivores (Andean bear, Tremarctos ornatus [3,5]; American black bear, Ursus americanus [6]), full omnivores (Asiatic black bear, Ursus thibetanus [7,8]; brown bear, Ursus arctos [9,10]) and several hypercarnivores (jaguar, Panthera onca [11]; dhole, Cuon alpinus [12]; cheetah, Acinonyx jubatus [13]). At first, Wolf & Ripple lump together mammalian carnivores (those in the order Carnivora, which may or may not be regular predators), apex predators (which occupy the top of food chains [14]) and any carnivore (which primarily consumes other vertebrates). Further, they mixed guilds (a group of species that exploit similar resources) with taxocenosis (a group of sympatric species sharing a common phylogenetic clade). Consequently, the authors provide a biased assessment of reintroduction priorities based on conservation imperatives that are not restricted to any of these groups, but primarily associated with apex predators. This commentary explores the development of this muddle, which I interpret to be mainly due to a combination of inaccurate use of nomenclature and concepts. Furthermore, the authors make some mistakes for a number of proposed reintroduction sites that proper investigation would have revealed to be inappropriate. Mammalian carnivores are not alone as apex predators, as the latter comprise a diverse set of terrestrial and aquatic vertebrates on Earth [14], which include (but are not limited to) large raptors and large, predatory reptiles. By equating apex predators …