Present address: Division of Biology, Imperial College London, Silwood Park, Ascot, SL5 7PY, UK.
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‘Take-away’ foraging spatially uncouples predator and prey-attack distributions
Article first published online: 23 APR 2010
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2656.2010.01700.x
© 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 British Ecological Society
Additional Information
How to Cite
Smallegange, I. M., Van Der Meer, J. and Sabelis, M. W. (2010), ‘Take-away’ foraging spatially uncouples predator and prey-attack distributions. Journal of Animal Ecology, 79: 769–776. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2656.2010.01700.x
Publication History
- Issue published online: 7 JUN 2010
- Article first published online: 23 APR 2010
- Received 17 December 2009; accepted 29 March 2010Handling Editor: Tim Coulson
Keywords:
- foraging behaviour;
- interference competition;
- population stability;
- predator-prey dynamics;
- travelling costs
Summary
1. Ideal-free distribution theory assumes that in a patchy environment foragers maximize fitness and hence their feeding rate by balancing gains from more food against losses from more competition. Ultimately, individuals cannot increase their feeding rate by moving to another patch and they distribute themselves over patches in proportion to prey density per patch.
2. In our experiments with shore crabs Carcinus maenas foraging on two adjacent patches with mussels Mytilus edulis, the implicit assumption of ideal-free distribution theory that catch should match time spent in a prey patch is not met, however. Despite aggregating their attack where it is most profitable shore crabs distributed themselves homogeneously across mussel patches: they ‘take away’ the prey caught and consume it elsewhere to reduce interference.
3. Thus, predator distributions can be quite different from prey-attack distributions. This is important because the latter is shown to be decisive for persistence of predator and prey populations in ecological models.