A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1039 entries
ecology of fear
The principle that predators shape a landscape not just by killing prey but by scaring it. Elk that fear wolves don’t linger in open meadows or streamside willows — they move, they browse less, they stay alert. The plants recover. The streams narrow. The banks stabilize. The landscape changes not because the wolves ate the elk but because the elk changed their behavior.
Etymology
Coined by ecologist Joel Brown and colleagues in the 1990s, from Greek oikos (“house, dwelling”) + logos (“study”) + fear, from Old English fǣr (“sudden danger, calamity”). The phrase frames fear itself as a measurable ecological pressure, on par with predation.