The mesopredator release hypothesis is a relatively new hypothesis from 1988 which describes the phenomenon of trophic cascade in certain terrestrial communities. It states that as top predators decline in an ecosystem, an increase in the populations of mesopredators occurs. Mesopredators are middle trophic level predators such as raccoons, skunks, snakes, cownose rays, and small sharks.
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Famous quotes containing the words release and/or hypothesis:
“The near touch of death may be a release into life; if only it will break the egoistic will, and release that other flow.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“The hypothesis I wish to advance is that ... the language of morality is in ... grave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.”
—Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (b. 1929)