It is amazing because of the ripple implications: deer are scared of wolves therefore they don't eat on forests where they can be easily ambushed therefore trees have a better chance of growing therefore they make more shade on the river banks therefore trouts have better places to lay eggs.
In the end: wolves bring more trouts. Who would have thought of that.
> and found that elk rarely changed their feeding behavior in response to wolves.
Perhaps a more useful study would have been to compare elkfeeding behavior pre-1995 to post wolf introduction. By 2007 maybe the Elk had just got the hang of living around wolves. Maybe their behavior had already changed?
Those are the questions we'll never be able to answer for sure. All we can observe are correlations and cannot draw certain causations from it. Ecosystems are complex and its variables change constantly. The appearance of wolves was one notable change, but not the only one. Others have suggested drought as a possible factor for the change in elk population.
Which one of the explanations is the truth, I can't possibly tell. Both sound plausible to a layman, and neither can be proven definitively.
It is amazing because of the ripple implications: deer are scared of wolves therefore they don't eat on forests where they can be easily ambushed therefore trees have a better chance of growing therefore they make more shade on the river banks therefore trouts have better places to lay eggs.
In the end: wolves bring more trouts. Who would have thought of that.