title: How Nature-Based Tourism Might Increase Prey Vulnerability to Predators.
abstract: Tourism can be deleterious for wildlife because it triggers behavioral changes in individuals with cascading effects on populations and communities. Among these behavioral changes, animals around humans often reduce their fearfulness and antipredator responses towards humans. A straightforward prediction is that habituation to humans associated with tourism would negatively influence reaction to predators. This could happen indirectly, where human presence decreases the number of natural predators and thus prey become less wary, or directly, where human-habituated individuals become bolder and thus more vulnerable to predation. Building on ideas from the study of traits associated with domestication and urbanization, we develop a framework to understand how behavioral changes associated with nature-based tourism can impact individual fitness, and thus the demographic trajectory of a population.
authors.affiliation: Center of Study of the Meridional Amazon, Federal University of Mato Grosso, Sinop, Brazil; INRA, UR1037 LPGP, Fish Physiology and Genomics, Campus de Beaulieu, 35000 Rennes, France.
authors.forename: Benjamin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Geffroy
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Theoretical Ecology and Synthesis, Department of Ecology, Federal University of Goiás, CP. 131, 74001-970 Goiânia, Brazil.
authors.forename: Diogo S M
authors.initials: DSM
authors.lastname: Samia
authors.affiliation: State University of Mato Grosso, Tangará da Serra, Mato Grosso, Brazil; Laboratory of Behavioral Ecology of Reproduction, State University of Ponta Grossa, Av. Gal. Carlos Cavalcanti, 4748, 84030-900 Ponta Grossa, Paraná, Brazil.
authors.forename: Eduardo
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bessa
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, 621 Young Drive South, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1606, USA. Electronic address: marmots@ucla.edu.
authors.forename: Daniel T
authors.initials: DT
authors.lastname: Blumstein
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic; D006802:Human Activities; D011235:Predatory Behavior