> so effective as bird killers that wind-turbines were even acknowledged officially as "top predator"
This is using "top" in the sense of "apex", because turbines have no natural predators. The paper says you could imagine them as something at the top of the trophic web. The paper explores the impact on their prey populations.
That's opposed to "top" in the sense of "kills more than other predators" or whatever. I mention it because number-of-kills is what the rest of the discussion seems to be about.
This is using "top" in the sense of "apex", because turbines have no natural predators. The paper says you could imagine them as something at the top of the trophic web. The paper explores the impact on their prey populations.
That's opposed to "top" in the sense of "kills more than other predators" or whatever. I mention it because number-of-kills is what the rest of the discussion seems to be about.