1. Predation is an important and ubiquitous selective force that can shape habitat preferences of prey species, but tests of alternative mechanistic hypotheses of habitat influences on predation risk are lacking. 2. We studied predation risk at nest sites of a passerine bird and tested two hypotheses based on theories of predator foraging behaviour. The total-foliage hypothesis predicts that pr...

Multiple theories predict the evolution of foraging rates in response to environmental variation in predation risk, intraspecific competition, time constraints, and temperature. We tested six hypotheses for the evolution of foraging rate in 24 spotted salamander (Ambystoma maculatum) populations from three latitudinally divergent sites using structural equation models derived from theory and ap...

Parasite modification of host behavior is common, and the literature is dominated by demonstrations of enhanced predation on parasitized prey resulting in transmission of parasites to their next host. We present a case in which predation on parasitized prey is reduced. Despite theoretical modeling suggesting that this phenomenon should be common, it has been reported in only a few host-parasite...

Larvae of the mosquito Toxorhynchites rutilus (Coquillett) prey upon other container-dwelling insects, including larvae of Aedes albopictus (Skuse), which is native to Asia but was introduced into the United States, and on the native tree hole mosquito Ochlerotatus triseriatus (Say). Previous work has established that O. triseriatus adopts low-risk behaviors in the presence of predation risk fr...

Prey have evolved anti-predator defences that reduce or eliminate the risk of predation. Predators often reproduce at specific sites over many years causing permanent threats to local prey species. Such prey may respond by moving elsewhere thereby reducing local population abundance, or they may stay put and adjust their behavior to the presence of predators. We tested these predictions by anal...

Variable levels of predation pressure are known to have significant impacts on the evolutionary ecology of different populations and can affect life-history traits, behavior, and morphology. To date, no studies have directly investigated the impact of predation pressure on cognitive ability. Here we use a system of replicate rivers, each with sites of highand low-predation pressure, to investig...

The palm tree Euterpe edulis is endemic to the Atlantic Forest, where it constitutes an economically important forest product. The often unplanned and illegal harvesting of palm hearts has led to drastic reductions in the populations of E. edulis in many areas where this palm used to be the dominant understorey tree species. We investigated the effects of harvesting on seed and seedling predati...

Although prey must move to forage, escape predation or gain information about predation risk, movement itself enhances the risk of predation by increasing visibility of prey and encounter rates with predators. Animals subjected to stressors often show altered behaviour; a widely cited effect of contaminant exposure is an increase in vulnerability to predation, which may be mediated by an increa...

Trophic level interactions between predators create complex relationships such as intraguild predation. Theoretical research has predicted two possible paths to stability in intraguild systems: intermediate predators either outcompete higher-order predators for shared resources or select habitat based on security. The effects of intraguild predation on intermediate mammalian predators such as s...

(Post-dispersal seed predation of Anadenanthera falcata (Benth.) Speg. (Leguminosae-Mimosoideae) in a gallery forest in Barra do Garças, MT, Brazil). Seed predation is one of the bottlenecks for the regeneration of tropical trees. The influence of post-dispersal seed predation of A. falcata on seedling recruitment was studied in a gallery forest in “Parque Estadual da Serra Azul” (PESA) in Barr...