ArticleScience advances2026
Compound food failure on a deteriorated mast system drives Japan's bear conflict crisis.
Article in Science advances, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Climate change is recognized as a key amplifier of human-wildlife conflict, yet the underlying mechanism remains poorly understood. Japan's 2025 bear crisis, which produced 232 casualties, has been widely attributed to rapid population growth, but demographic processes are far too gradual to explain the surge. Using an 18-year dataset across five Tohoku prefectures, we find that it reflects bears responding to a rhythm breakdown of the forest's food supply. Conflict rises sharply once mast production falls below a threshold. Around 2006, the mast system passed a break point, after which lean years grew more severe and crossed that threshold more often. Conflict is further amplified when the alternative food source, indexed by primary productivity, fails alongside mast, and the 2023/2025 outbreaks provide a natural experiment separating compound from single-source failure. Beyond the Japanese bear-mast system, our analysis yields a generalized diagnostic framework that considers failing food rhythms, compound shortages, and the thresholds at which animals enter human space.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.