Evolutionary traps as keys to understanding behavioral maladapation

- Evolutionary traps are severe cases of behavioral maladaptation that can cause population declines in wildlife.
- Demographic simulations suggest traps are a severe conservation threat, but more empirical studies are needed.
- We must better understand the sensory-cognitive mechanisms that cause traps if we wish to better predict and eliminate them.
- Development of a first model experimental system allowing one to ask basic and applied questions.

Evolutionary traps are severe cases of behavioral maladaptation that occur when, due to human activity, the cues animals use to guide their behavior become uncoupled from their fitness consequences. The result is that animals can prefer the most dangerous resources or behaviors, even when better options are available. Traps are increasingly common and represent a significant wildlife conservation problem. Understanding of the more proximate sensory-cognitive mechanisms underpinning traps remains poor, which highlights the need for interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches to investigating traps. Key to advancing basic trap theory and its conservation applications will be the development of appropriate and tractable model systems to investigate the mechanisms that cause traps within species, and how mechanisms vary across species.