What might happen to a population of rabbits in a forest if a new predator moved to the forest?
1 Answer
If the new competitor can compete effectively with existing predators, the rabbit population might crash, but then both of the carnivore populations would also eventually crash from lack of food.
Explanation:
However, if the new competitor was not as well adapted to the new environment, it may not be able to compete with existing predators and therefore, it might not make much difference to the rabbit populations.
For example something like this might be happening in the high Arctic now. Polar bears are having more and more trouble finding seals to hunt as the pack ice disappears due to global warming, so they are increasingly trying to hunt goose eggs and other land-based food sources. But polar bears are not really adapted to hunting geese eggs, so its not clear how successful this will be fore them. This puts them in competition with Arctic foxes who also hunt goose eggs. Not clear at this point if the Polar bears will become a successful new predator or not or what the implications to geese or the Arctic fox will be.
