When foraging and fear meet: using foraging hierarchies to inform assessments of landscapes of fear

Kate R. Searle, Chris J. Stokes and Iain J. Gordon

Behavioral Ecology, 2008, vol. 19, issue 3, 475-482

Abstract: Anthropogenic environmental change is escalating in magnitude, rate, and extent, inducing cascading effects across trophic levels. Assessing the nature of these alterations to trophic interactions requires an understanding of how species' demography and behavior are altered by simultaneous, complex pressures. For predator--prey relationships, "landscapes of fear" have been used to measure the trade-off prey animals make between maximizing energy gain and minimizing risk of predation. However, hierarchical foraging theory predicts that the degree to which aggregations of resources are used will depend upon the context in which they occur, not merely on the predation risk associated with those patches. We develop a conceptual framework that synthesizes theories of foraging hierarchies and landscapes of fear to show how predation risk and resource variation may interact to influence foraging behavior. We show, experimentally, that northern brown bandicoots (Isoodon macrourus), do respond to the likely predation risk when making their foraging decisions; however, the food resources in the habitat surrounding the food patch also play a significant role in the degree to which food patches are used. This result has important implications for the accuracy of assessments of landscapes of fear and habitat use using observations of animal foraging behavior. Copyright 2008, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/arn004 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:beheco:v:19:y:2008:i:3:p:475-482

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Behavioral Ecology is currently edited by Louise Barrett

More articles in Behavioral Ecology from International Society for Behavioral Ecology Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().