Successful conservation management is often based on the principle that small or declining populations can recover if we identify and remove the factors that caused them to decline in the first place. But what form will that recovery take? Theory tells us that when a strong limiting factor is removed, a population should increase in size to where it becomes limited by some other factor. However, if the subsequent limitation involves feedbacks between the density of a consumer and its resource, there is potential for the consumer population to undergo substantial fluctuations in size that we would characterise as boom-bust or eruptive dynamics. We analysed long-term (7.6-29 years) data documenting changes in the abundance of 169 populations of 20 mammal species released from a strong limiting factor (fox predation) in Australia. We show that many populations (44) exhibited eruptive dynamics, with exponential increase to a peak and subsequent population decline. Of 51 populations showing eruptive dynamics (the Australian populations plus 7 translocated ungulate populations), the time taken for erupting populations to reach a peak before declining was related negatively to the intrinsic rate of population growth and positively to body mass, such that larger-bodied species with slow rates of population growth had a longer period of population increase before declining. Our results suggest that a substantial proportion of populations recovering after removal of a threatening process are likely to exhibit eruptive dynamics, and that managers of recovering or translocated populations should anticipate this outcome in conservation planning.

中文翻译：

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爆发动力学在受管理的哺乳动物种群中很常见

成功的保护管理通常基于这样一个原则，即如果我们首先确定并消除导致它们减少的因素，那么小种群或减少的种群可以恢复。但这种复苏将采取什么形式？理论告诉我们，当一个强大的限制因素被移除时，种群的规模应该会增加到受其他因素限制的程度。但是，如果随后的限制涉及消费者密度与其资源之间的反馈，则消费者群体有可能经历规模的大幅波动，我们将其描述为繁荣-萧条或爆发性动态。我们分析了长期（7.6-29 年）数据，这些数据记录了澳大利亚 20 种哺乳动物的 169 个种群因强限制因素（狐狸捕食）而释放的丰度变化。我们表明，许多种群 (44) 表现出爆发性动态，呈指数增长至峰值，随后种群下降。在显示出爆发动态的 51 个种群（澳大利亚种群加上 7 个易位的有蹄类动物种群）中，爆发种群在下降之前达到峰值所需的时间与人口增长的内在速率呈负相关，与体重呈正相关，例如体型较大的有蹄类动物人口增长速度缓慢的物种在下降之前有更长的人口增长期。我们的结果表明，在消除威胁过程后恢复的相当大比例的种群可能会表现出爆发性的动态，恢复或易地种群的管理者应该在保护规划中预测这一结果。