Re:Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco
by cutemonster on Saturday March 28, 2020 @08:07AM
(#22710627)
@nroets, Humans (the Europeans in this case) made the Dodo bird extinct quite fast, closer to 80 years than 80 000.
One doesn't need to be someone's long time natural predator to have an impact
80,000 years may be a blink in an eye in evolutionary terms but it does not take that long for a predator to come into an environment and become entrenched as the natural check on some other species.
I would say https://science.sciencemag.org/content/314/5802/1111 for example of introduction of species
something like this https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/285705 for how dominance of predator works.
However not sure how well the Native Americans were actually keeping animals in check given the many species they have been shown to have helped bring to extinction.
That said not sure how long it would take from being a natural predator to being a keystone species.