Ecological and evolutionary implications of food subsidies from humans

Human activities are the main current driver of global change. From hunter-gatherers through to Neolithic societies-and particularly in contemporary industrialised countries-humans have (voluntarily or involuntarily) provided other animals with food, often with a high spatio-temporal predictability. Nowadays, as much as 30-40% of all food produced in Earth is wasted. We argue here that predictable anthropogenic food subsidies (PAFS) provided historically by humans to animals has shaped many communities and ecosystems as we see them nowadays. PAFS improve individual fitness triggering population increases of opportunistic species, which may affect communities, food webs and ecosystems by altering processes such…