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Temporally fluctuating prey and interfering predators: a positive feedback

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Author

Summary, in English

Prey densities often show fluctuating patterns over various timescales. Focusing on short-term, within-generation fluctuating patterns of local prey availability, we suggest that prey that show synchronized and high-amplitude fluctuations in availability experience decreased risks of predation, but also enhance the maintenance of predator interference hierarchies by affecting the relative foraging success of unequal conspecific interferers. When predators interfere with each other, they forage less intensely on prey, which benefits prey in terms of decreased predation risk. The system hence involves a positive feedback. We thus argue that short-term temporal fluctuations in local prey availability could be an important mechanism behind how interference-structured social predator systems are developed and sustained. The temporal fluctuations also have implications for the phenotypic diversity of predators, and may be involved in speciation processes.

Department/s

Publishing year

2004

Language

English

Pages

159-165

Publication/Series

Animal Behaviour

Volume

68

Issue

1

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Elsevier

Topic

  • Ecology

Status

Published

Research group

  • Aquatic Ecology

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1095-8282