Outdoor pig operations are an alternative to intensive systems of raising pigs; however for the majority of outdoor pork producers, issues of biosecurity and predation control require significant management and (or) capital investment. Identifying and quantifying predation risk in outdoor pork operations has rarely been done, but such data would be informative for these producers as part of the...

Coyotes (Canis latrans) are novel predators throughout the southeastern United States and their depredation of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) neonates may explain observed declines in some deer populations in the region, but direct evidence for such a relationship is lacking. Our objective was to quantify neonate survival rates and causes of mortality at the United States Department...

Since Smith and Fretwell's seminal article in 1974 on the optimal offspring size, most theory has assumed a trade-off between offspring number and offspring fitness, where larger offspring have better survival or fitness, but with diminishing returns. In this article, we use two ubiquitous biological mechanisms to derive the shape of this trade-off: the offspring's growth rate combined with its...

Evolutionary theory predicts that the rate of extrinsic (i.e. ageand condition-independent) mortality should affect important life history traits such as the rate of ageing and maximum lifespan. Sex-specific differences in mortality rates due to predation may therefore result in the evolution of important differences in life history traits between males and females. However, quantifying the rol...

Prey availability and predation risk are important determinants of habitat use, but their importance may vary across spatial scales. In many marine systems, predator and prey distributions covary at large spatial scales, but do no coincide at small spatial scales. We investigated the influences of prey abundance and tiger shark (Galeocerdo cuvier ) predation risk on Indian Ocean bottlenose dolp...

A predator consuming multiple prey species usually causes indirect effects. Ap parent mutualism results when multiple prey species reduce predation risk for each other by altering a predator’s functional response. Short-term apparent competition occurs when multiple prey species increase predation risks for each other through the numerical response, i.e. increasing the predator’s birth rate, or...

Predator–prey communities are building blocks of an ecosystem. Feeding rates reflect interference between predators in several situations, e.g. when predators form a dense colony or perform collective motion in a school, encounter prey in a region of limited size, etc. We perform spatio-temporal dynamics and pattern formation in a model aquatic system in both homogeneous and heterogeneous envir...

Ectotherms generally demonstrate nonlinear changes in performance (e.g., movement speed, individual growth, population growth) as a function of temperature that are characterized by thermal performance curves (TPC). Predation risk elicits phenotypic and behavioral changes that likewise impact performance measures. We tested whether exposure to predation Orthocyclops modestus impacts the maximum...

Despite a growing body of research linking bioenergy cultivation to changing patterns of biodiversity, there has been remarkably little interest in how bioenergy plantations affect key ecosystem processes underpinning important ecosystem services. In this study, we compare how the processes of predation by ground arthropods and litter decomposition varied between Short Rotation Coppice (SRC) wi...