Sep 05, 2015 01:59 PM EDT By Rashmi Kalia, UniversityHerald Reporter

A new study conducted by a McGill University student has revealed that crowded settings lead to the birth of fewer offspring, explaining the reason for fewer lions, CBC News reports.

McGill student Ian Hatton, who conducted the study, visited dozens of parks in East and Southern Africa and looked at the prey species such as zebras and antelopes and predator species such as lions and hyenas in different African parks with different climates and environments. The team found that despite the presence of tasty food for the lions in the parks, the number of lions was decreasing instead of increasing.

"If you double the prey, you should double the predators," said Hatton. "And we found that this was not the case."

Hatton conducted the study for his PhD research under Michel Loreau, who is with the Centre national de la recherche scientifique in France.

According to some scientists, the new study has discovered a new law of nature. It throws light on how humans manage ecosystems for food production

The researchers discovered that growth patterns in ecosystems, where large numbers of prey were reproducing less, were similar to growth patterns in human beings.

According to the NYC Today, Michel Loreau, co-author of the study, said, "The discovery of ecosystem-level scaling laws is particularly exciting, adding that their most intriguing aspect is that they recur across levels of organization, from individuals to ecosystems, and yet ecosystem-level scaling laws cannot be explained by their individual-level counterparts".

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