Humans reshape predator-prey rules across food webs, creating a challenging new world for wildlife
Credit: Trends in Ecology & Evolution (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2026.01.005 The relationship between predators and prey in the wild is underscored by an evolutionary arms race spanning millions of years, but new research has found modern human activity is reshaping the rules. Led by Charles Sturt University (CSU) with support from Charles Darwin University and others, the review found that physical and behavioral traits of both predator and prey have been altered by human interference, and this has affected how they interact with each other.
- ▪Credit: Trends in Ecology & Evolution (2026).
- ▪DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2026.01.005 The relationship between predators and prey in the wild is underscored by an evolutionary arms race spanning millions of years, but new research has found modern human activity is reshaping the rules.
- ▪Led by Charles Sturt University (CSU) with support from Charles Darwin University and others, the review found that physical and behavioral traits of both predator and prey have been altered by human interference, and this has affected how
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| Original publisher | Phys.org |
| Canonical URL | https://phys.org/news/2026-05-humans-reshape-predator-prey-food.html |
| Publication time | Fri, 29 May 2026 10:20:01 EDT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-29T14:25:01.311Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-29T14:25:02.734Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | J9P5fkFlJTqQ |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
May 29, 2026 Humans reshape predator-prey rules across food webs, creating a challenging new world for wildlife by Charles Darwin University edited by Sadie Harley, reviewed by Robert Egan Sadie Harley Scientific Editor Meet our editorial team Behind our editorial process Robert Egan Associate Editor Meet our editorial team Behind our editorial process Editors' notes This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: fact-checked peer-reviewed publication trusted source proofread The GIST Add as preferred source The diverse pathways through which human disturbance can influence the traits of predators and prey and cascade to shape ecosystems.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Phys.org.