This article investigates the effects of reaching the maximum sustainable yield (MSY) in prey–predator systems where the prey population follows logistic law of growth. Two different models are proposed: (i) first model involves linear prey–predator interaction and intraspecific competition among predator populations, and (ii) the second one is a ratio-dependent prey–predator system. In the fir...

Catastrophic collapses of top predators have revealed trophic cascades and community structuring by top-down control. When populations fail to recover after a collapse, this may indicate alternative stable states in the system. Overfishing has caused several of the most compelling cases of these dynamics, and in particular Atlantic cod stocks exemplify such lack of recovery. Often, competition ...

Predator scent induces differing responses in two sympatric macropodids Daniel Ramp*, Ben G. Russell & David B. Croft School of Biological, Earth & Environmental Sciences University of New South Wales, NSW 2052 Australia. *E-mail: [email protected], Telephone: +61 2 9385 2111, Fax: +61 2 9385 1558. Abstract When prey species encounter the scent of a predator they must make a decision on how to...

Organisms generally have many defenses against predation, yet may lack effective defenses if from populations without predators. Evolutionary theory predicts that "costly" antipredator behaviors will be selected against when predation risk diminishes. We examined antipredator behaviors in Aegean wall lizards, Podarcis erhardii, across an archipelago of land-bridge islands that vary in predator ...

Despite the importance of predator recognition in mediating predator-prey interactions, we know little about the specific characteristics that prey use to distinguish predators from non-predators. Recent experiments indicate that some prey who do not innately recognize specific predators as threats have the ability to display antipredator responses upon their first encounter with those predator...

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, ...

We show, within the context of the standard class of deterministic ODE predator-prey mathematical models, that predator culling does not produce a long term decrease in the predator population.

A hallmark of Lotka-Volterra models, and other ecological models of predator-prey interactions, is that in predator-prey cycles, peaks in prey abundance precede peaks in predator abundance. Such models typically assume that species life history traits are fixed over ecologically relevant time scales. However, the coevolution of predator and prey traits has been shown to alter the community dyna...

Response delays to predator attack may be adaptive, suggesting that latency to respond does not always reflect predator detection time, but can be a decision based on starvation-predation risk trade-offs. In birds, some anti-predator behaviours have been shown to be correlated with personality traits such as activity level and exploration. Here, we tested for a correlation between exploration b...

The increased temperature associated with climate change may have important effects on body size and predator-prey interactions. The consequences of these effects for food web structure are unclear because the relationships between temperature and aspects of food web structure such as predator-prey body-size relationships are unknown. Here, we use the largest reported dataset for marine predato...