Species → European Rabbit
European Rabbit
Oryctolagus cuniculus
What if it disappeared?
Impact HighWhen a new virus caused rabbit populations to crash by 60 to 70% in Iberia, the effect on its predators showed up almost immediately: breeding success dropped by 65.7% for the Iberian lynx and 45.5% for the Spanish imperial eagle, the two predators that depend on it most.
DocumentedDetail
Disease-mediated bottom-up regulation: An emergent virus affects a keystone prey, and alters the dynamics of trophic webs. Scientific Reports, 6, 36072 (2016).
The European rabbit makes up more than 85% of the Iberian lynx's diet. The study establishes a direct link between the emergence of the RHDV2 virus variant, the local collapse of rabbit populations, and the measured decline in reproductive success of the two specialist predators most closely dependent on them.
Rabbits serve as prey for some forty predator species on the Iberian Peninsula. Ten years after the initial shock to the two specialists, this decline would likely spread well beyond them, reaching more generalist predators that eat rabbits without depending on them as closely.
ExtrapolatedDetail
Extrapolation à partir de la littérature sur le rôle de proie clé du lapin en Méditerranée occidentale, au-delà des deux cas mesurés directement.
The Iberian lynx and imperial eagle are the best-documented cases because they are strict rabbit specialists. Some forty other predators consume rabbits occasionally without depending on them as closely — the effect on them hasn't been measured individually, but their number suggests a decline that, over ten years, wouldn't stay confined to the two specialists.
What's missing to confirm it: The precise effect of the rabbit decline on generalist predators that consume them occasionally, rather than depending on them closely, hasn't been measured species by species.
Myxomatosis, deliberately introduced in France in 1952 and then spread across much of Europe, has already deprived generations of predators of abundant rabbits for nearly a century. The Iberian lynx, whose diet depends on rabbits for more than 85%, would plausibly not have survived in its current form without this prey — nor would the Spanish imperial eagle, whose breeding success collapses as soon as rabbits become scarce.
HypothesisOver a thousand years without rabbits, the near-total dependence that once tied the Iberian lynx and the Spanish imperial eagle to this single prey would likely have no reason to reform: these specialists would have gone extinct or been replaced by more generalist predators — and even if rabbits returned after a millennium, that close relationship probably wouldn't re-form in the same way.
HypothesisDocumentation
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Oryctolagus cuniculus (European Rabbit) — The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species
Accessed August 10, 2026
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IUCN Red List — Oryctolagus cuniculus, statut dans son aire native
Accessed August 7, 2026
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Disease-mediated bottom-up regulation: An emergent virus affects a keystone prey, Scientific Reports
Accessed August 7, 2026
Last verified: August 16, 2026