Hunted predators: Charisma confounds.

Drilled, slammed, peeled and crushed: marine predators hunted for shells at the Langenboom locality (the Netherlands)

Intestinal parasite infection exposes grouse to canine predators

Background Sublethal parasite infections may cause mortality indirectly by exposing the host to predation. The best known example of this among birds is red grouse in which caecal nematode infection causes increased risk of predation and can even affect population dynamics [1]. Intestinal helminth parasites are common in forest grouse, capercaillie Tetrao urogallus, black grouse Tetrao tetrix a...

Benefits of Group Foraging Depend on Prey Type in a Small Marine Predator, the Little Penguin

Group foraging provides predators with advantages in over-powering prey larger than themselves or in aggregating small prey for efficient exploitation. For group-living predatory species, cooperative hunting strategies provide inclusive fitness benefits. However, for colonial-breeding predators, the benefit pay-offs of group foraging are less clear due to the potential for intra-specific compet...

Ecologically justified charisma: preservation of top predators delivers biodiversity conservation

FABRIZIO SERGIO ,*† IAN NEWTON,‡ LUIGI MARCHESI† and PAOLO PEDRINI† *Department of Applied Biology, Estación Biológica de Doñana, CSIC, Avda. María Luisa s/n, Pabellón del Perú, 41013 Seville, Spain; †Raptor Conservation Research Unit, Trento Museum of Natural Sciences, Via Calepina 14, 38100 Trento, Italy; and ‡Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Monks Wood, Abbots Ripton, Huntingdon, Cambridges...

Survival of an evasive prey.

We study the survival of a prey that is hunted by N predators. The predators perform independent random walks on a square lattice with V sites and start a direct chase whenever the prey appears within their sighting range. The prey is caught when a predator jumps to the site occupied by the prey. We analyze the efficacy of a lazy, minimal-effort evasion strategy according to which the prey trie...