Recently there has been debate over the importance of innate avoidance of aposematic prey by predators, particularly birds. There is evidence that the predators have innate or unlearned, thus, inherited avoidance against certain colors, but whether there is any innate avoidance against gregariousness or conspicuousness is unclear. Previously predator behavior toward these characters of aposemat...

Many prey have evolved toxins as a defense against predation. Those species that advertise their toxicity to would-be predators with conspicuous warning signals are known as "aposematic." Investment in toxicity by aposematically signaling prey is thought to underpin how aversive prey are to predators; increasing toxicity means that predators learn to avoid prey faster and attack them at lower r...

The spatial distributions of predators and prey can be shaped by both intraand interspecific games. Most predator–prey studies, however, have ignored the interspecific game by focusing on how either predators or prey distribute themselves while holding the distribution of the other species fixed. We use genetic algorithms to examine how the distributional outcome of the game between predators a...

Top predators in terrestrial ecosystems may limit populations of smaller predators that could otherwise become over abundant and cause declines and extinctions of some prey. It is therefore possible that top predators indirectly protect many species of prey from excessive predation. This effect has been demonstrated in some small-scale studies, but it is not known how general or important it is...

Invasive predators can impose strong selection pressure on species that evolved in their absence and drive species to extinction. Interactions between coexisting predators may be particularly strong, as larger predators frequently kill smaller predators and suppress their abundances. Until 3500 years ago the marsupial thylacine was Australia's largest predator. It became extinct from the mainla...

Predators affect herbivores directly and indirectly, by consumptive and nonconsumptive effects, and the combined influence of multiple predators is shaped by interactions among predators. I documented the individual and combined effects of birds (chickadees, nuthatches, warblers) and ants (Formica podzolica) on arthropods residing in pine (Pinus ponderosa) canopies in a factorial field experime...

Efforts to restore ecosystems often focus on reintroducing apex predators to re-establish coevolved relationships among predators, herbivores and plants. The preponderance of evidence for indirect effects of predators on terrestrial plant communities comes from ecosystems where predators have been removed. Far less is known about the consequences of their restoration. The effects of removal and...

Apex predators perform important functions that regulate ecosystems worldwide. However, little is known about how ecosystem regulation by predators is influenced by human activities. In particular, how important are top-down effects of predators relative to direct and indirect human-mediated bottom-up and top-down processes? Combining data on species' occurrence from camera traps and hunting re...

This article demonstrates how perceptual constraints of predators and the possibility that predators encounter prey both sequentially (one prey type at a time) and simultaneously (two or more prey types at a time) may influence the predator attack decisions, diet composition and functional response of a behavioural predator-prey system. Individuals of a predator species are assumed to forage op...

Traditionally, predator switching has been assumed to be a stabilizing force in ecological systems. Recent work, however, has shown that predator switching can be either stabilizing or destabilizing. Most models of predator switching, to date, assume that prey are behaviorally passive and do not respond to predators. We allowed prey to respond behaviorally to predators, so as to avoid capture, ...