The biology of fear: from brains to ecosystems to human mental health and human impacts

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Humans are both “super predator” and prey – inducing fear in other animals and fearing them in turn. Our role as predator is revealing the central importance of predator-induced fear in ecology; recognizing our role as prey is enhancing our understanding of post-traumatic stress (PTSD); and measuring the fear we inspire may provide a tool to gauge our impacts on the environment, and so aid conservation. My extremely original and innovative research program encompasses this nexus of predator-induced fear. I demonstrated for the first time that fear itself is powerful enough to affect wildlife population dynamics, partly because frightened parents will literally let their young starve to death, and I will now quantify the total impact of fear, by testing if adults may also ‘die of fright'. Frightening their prey to death, e.g. by impairing parental care, has been argued to be part of the critical ‘ecosystem service' large carnivores provide, in keeping their large herbivore prey in check; a service being lost with the loss of large carnivores caused by their persecution by the human “super predator”. I will test how the fear of large carnivores impacts the demography and behaviour of their large herbivore prey in two parallel experiments, on deer on B.C.'s Gulf Islands, and ungulates (e.g. wildebeest) in South African game reserves with and without lions. It would be surprising if fear did not affect reproduction or survival, if it has lasting impacts of the brain, as in PTSD. Predator-induced fear is now one of the most common stressors used in ‘animal model' (lab rat) studies of PTSD, because it produces effects on the brain matching those seen in PTSD sufferers. I will test for comparable lasting impacts of fear on the brain in wild animals, to determine the links to demography, and help validate the ‘predator model' of PTSD. My pioneering research demonstrates that, due to their persecution, large carnivores have come to so fear the human “super predator” this can affect their keeping large herbivores in check, and I will now test the resulting ecosystem-level impacts. Humans are definitely a predator, poaching being a principal cause of biodiversity loss. Quantifying poaching presently relies upon questionnaires, which are intrinsically unreliable because respondents must to confess to crimes. Animals know their enemies, and I will test if ‘interrogating' wildlife about their fear of humans, using innovative new technology I developed, can be used as a tool to reliably gauge the impacts of poaching, and ecotourism. My transformative discoveries will advance ecology, benefit PTSD patient care, and aid conservation. I will train 1 Post-doc, 6 PhDs, 5 MScs, and multiple BSc Honours and undergraduate assistants. These HQP will be equipped to progress to highly impactful positions in environmental assessment, biomedical sciences, protected areas management, tourism, governmental policy making and academia.********