Scared of darkness?

Are you scared of the dark? Predators can change the species present in a community by consuming particular individuals removing them from the ecosystem. However, a new paper published Early View in Oikos “Fear in the dark? Community-level effects of non-lethal predators change with light regime”, Coreen Forbes and Edd Hammill” shows that under dark conditions, fear of predation alone is enough to lose species from communities. Under dark conditions, photosynthesis is impossible meaning the only species that can survive are ones that can collect energy from existing sources. Moving around to collect this energy also increases the chances of encountering a predator, so when scared, some species reduce the rate at which they move around. This reduction in movement means other species can harvest the energy source faster than the “scared” species. Because the scared species is now less competitive, it can be driven to extinction despite the fact it is not being eaten by predators. Our research shows how important predators are for keeping ecological communities in order