More Like this

1. Changes in prey body size differentially reduces predation risk across predator and prey abundances

   https://doi.org/10.1111/oik.09933  

   Hammill, Edd ; Hancey, Kayla ; Cortez, Michael ( April 2023 , Oikos)

   Subject Editor: Gregor Kalinkat Editor-in-Chief: Dries Bonte (Ed.)

   Trophic interactions underpin the structure of ecological communities by describing the rates at which consumers exploit their resources. The rates at which predators consume their prey are influenced by prey traits, with many species inducing defensive modifications to prey traits following the threat of predation. Here we use different clonal lines of the protist Paramecium being consumed by Stenostomum predators to highlight how differences in prey traits impact rates of predation. Clonal lines differed in their body width traits, and in their ability to induce changes in body width. By using a factorial cross of predator and prey abundances for different clonal lines we demonstrate how evolutionary or induced alterations in prey traits can impact the relative threat of predation. Our experiments show how interference among predators impacts predation rate, and how increased body width increased predator handling times. Given that reductions in the strength of interspecific interactions are associated with increased levels of overall community stability, our results indicate how individual level changes may scale up to impact whole communities 

   more » « less
2. Intraspecific diversity in prey body size influences survivorship by conferring resistance to predation

   https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.3106  

   Gribben, Paul E. ; Bishop, Melanie J. ; O’Connor, Wayne A. ; Bradley, Daniel J. ; Hughes, A. Randall ( April 2020 , Ecosphere)

   null (Ed.)
3. Planktonic prey size selection reveals an emergent keystone predator effect and niche partitioning

   https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280884  

   Taniguchi, Darcy A. ; Follows, Michael J. ; Menden-Deuer, Susanne ( February 2023 , PLOS ONE)

   Miki, Takeshi (Ed.)

   Marine herbivorous protists are often the dominant grazers of primary production. We developed a size-based model with flexible size-based grazing to encapsulate taxonomic and behavioral diversity. We examined individual and combined grazing impacts by three consumer sizes that span the size range of protistan grazers– 5, 50, and 200 μm—on a size-structured phytoplankton community. Prey size choice and dietary niche width varied with consumer size and with co-existence of other consumers. When all consumer sizes were present, distinct dietary niches emerged, with a range of consumer-prey size ratios spanning from 25:1 to 0.4:1, encompassing the canonical 10:1 often assumed. Grazing on all phytoplankton size classes maximized the phytoplankton size diversity through the keystone predator effect, resulting in a phytoplankton spectral slope of approximately -4, agreeing with field data. This mechanistic model suggests the observed size structure of phytoplankton communities is at least in part the result of selective consumer feeding.

    

   more » « less
4. Competition, prey, and mortalities influence gray wolf group size

   https://doi.org/10.1002/jwmg.22193  

   Sells, Sarah N. ; Mitchell, Michael S. ; Podruzny, Kevin M. ; Ausband, David E. ; Emlen, Douglas J. ; Gude, Justin A. ; Smucker, Ty D. ; Boyd, Diane K. ; Loonam, Kenneth E. ( April 2022 , The Journal of Wildlife Management)
5. Increase in predator-prey size ratios throughout the Phanerozoic history of marine ecosystems

   https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aam7468  

   Klompmaker, Adiël A. ; Kowalewski, Michał ; Huntley, John Warren ; Finnegan, Seth ( June 2017 , Science)