Journal of Animal Ecology

This paper draws together a disparate literature and demonstrates, via simulations and an application to field data, that the case-control model with contaminated controls is a practical model for estimating the absolute probability of animal resource use from use-availability data.

The authors demonstrate that a combination of habitat selection analysis at several trophic levels and at multiple spatial scales can provide an efficient quantitative framework for studying predator-prey spatial games in dynamical systems where both groups move constantly. Focussing on a caribou-moose-wolf food web, the study illustrates how differences in fine-scale movement tactics between predators and prey create asymmetry in their relative encounter probabilities.

The authors provide the first comprehensive empirical analysis of the scaling relationship between field metabolic rate and body mass in individual birds and mammals. The analysis reveals the importance of heterogeneity in the scaling exponent, with consequences for biomass and nutrient flow through communities, and the structure and functioning of whole ecosystems.

This paper presents general mechanistic theory to predict effects of temperature (due to climate change and seasonal variation) on consumer–resource interactions. Better understanding of how temperature influences species interactions will lead to more accurate predictions for how communities, food webs and ecosystems will respond to current and future temperature changes.

The manner in which animals respond to risk is crucial in understanding species coexistence. Here the authors show that avoidance of more dominant predators by cheetahs in northern Botswana is reactive rather than predictive – a strategy that could be key in enabling competing species to coexist in an ecosystem where risks are widespread and recurrent.