The behavioural legacies of past human–animal interactions

Human–animal interactions drive behavioural trait changes in animals. The cumulative effect of these changes on the behavioural repertoire of species and populations critically determines their capacity to adapt to future human-induced environmental change, particularly under scenarios of reduced population size and limited genetic variability. However, attention has focused almost exclusively on contemporary human–animal interactions, representing only a narrow subset of the spatio-temporal continuum across which these interactions operate. In this talk, I call for integrating the behavioural legacies of past human–animal interactions into theories of animal behaviour. By transposing the haunted landscape concept from cultural geography to animal ecology, I extend one of the most fundamental determinants of animal decision-making, the landscape of fear of humans, into its historical dimension. I will present a framework to detect such behavioural legacies which I outlined in the first chapter of my PhD, and discuss how it can be applied to the golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos), a raptor hunted to near-extinction across Europe, which will serve as the focus of my next PhD chapter.