Habitat effects on the relative importance of trait‐ and density‐mediated indirect interactions

Trussell, Geoffrey C.; Ewanchuk, Patrick J.; Matassa, Catherine M.

doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2006.00981.x

Cited by 194 publications

(223 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Reduction in habitat heterogeneity generally seems likely to increase the strength of lethal effects because it reduces the ability of animals to respond non-lethally (Trussell et al 2006).…”

Section: Evolutionary or Cultural Lag And Constraints On Non-lethal Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predation in bird populations

Cresswell

2010

J Ornithol

253

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One of the classic ecological questions is how predators affect population size. This is often assessed by measuring how many individuals are killed by a predator, yet such direct effects may only be a relatively minor part of population dynamics. Predators frequently affect prey populations indirectly, with the fear of predation resulting in costly behavioural compensation leading to potentially large population and community effects. Large observable lethal effects may then just represent the most easily observed "special" cases of the effects of predation on populations, with the costs of non-lethal effects being ubiquitous and usually dominant. This review explores these two ideas: that cases where there are no population effects due to predation, and cases where lethal effects dominate, are unusual and involve special circumstances. First, systems where predation effects appear not to arise include complete avoidance of predators by prey; when other environmental factors limit populations so that predation is not additive to mortality; when there are other more vulnerable prey for a predator; when predators interact; because the relationship of perceived predation risk with predator abundance is usually a non-linear function, and simply because non-lethal effects have not been considered. Second, lethal effects tend to dominate over non-lethal effects when there is a high cost of compensating for predation risk associated with either resource constraint or a particularly vulnerable niche or life history stage (e.g. the nest stage generally for birds); when prey are the most popular prey of a predator or linear trophic chains operate; when there is evolutionary lag such as introduced predators and naïve prey populations; and when there are several predator species hunting the same prey in diverse ways. The presence of predators may or may not affect the size of a bird population at any particular life history stage, although in most cases it will through non-lethal effects and occasionally through lethal effects.But the presence of predators will always affect intra-and interspecific competition and so will always affect population dynamics. Studies that wish to fully demonstrate that predation has no effect on bird populations must show that lethal effects and the costs of non-lethal compensation by the prey do not significantly change its density and so the level of competition.3

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Section: Evolutionary or Cultural Lag And Constraints On Non-lethal Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predation in bird populations

Cresswell

2010

J Ornithol

253

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“…Experiments suggest that these NCEs and associated trait-mediated indirect effects (i.e. indirect effects of the predator on other species through induced changes in traits of the intervening prey, sensu [4]) can be as or more important than the direct and indirect effects arising from CEs of predators (reviewed in [12][13][14][15][16]). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scaling-up anti-predator phenotypic responses of prey: impacts over multiple generations in a complex aquatic community

et al. 2011

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Non-consumptive effects (NCEs) of predators owing to induced changes in prey traits are predicted to influence the structure of ecological communities. However, evidence of the importance of NCEs is limited primarily to simple systems (e.g. two to four species) over relatively short periods (e.g. less than one generation). We examined the NCEs of a fish predator, arising from phenotypic plasticity in zooplankton prey traits, over multiple generations of a diverse zooplankton community. The presence of fish, caged to remove consumptive effects, strongly influenced zooplankton community structure, through both direct and indirect NCE pathways, altering the abundance of many taxa by magnitudes as large as 3 to 10-fold. Presence of fish affected different species of cladocerans and copepods both positively and negatively. A particularly striking result was the reversal of dominance in copepod taxa: presence of fish reduced the ratio of calanoids to cyclopoids from 6.3 to 0.43. Further, the NCE of fish had a strong negative trophic cascade to zooplankton resources (phytoplankton). To our knowledge, this is the first experiment to show that NCEs can influence the abundance of multiple prey species over time spans of multiple prey generations. Our findings demonstrate that adaptive phenotypic plasticity of individuals can scale-up to affect the structure of ecological communities.

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“…Theory suggests that such plasticity can promote species coexistence and stabilize population dynamics (Matsuda et al 1993;Bolker et al 2003) as well as provide insight into the paradox of enrichment (Vos et al 2004a,b;Mougi and Nishimura 2007, 2008a, b, 2009) and the complexity-stability debate (Kondoh 2003(Kondoh , 2007. Many empirical studies have documented the importance of trait-mediated indirect effects in three species food chains (see Werner and Peacor 2003;Schmitz et al 2004) via their influence on trophic cascades (Trussell et al , 2006aSchmitz et al 2004) and ecosystem function (Trussell et al 2006bSchmitz et al 2008). Many of these empirical works have focused on plasticity in behavioral traits such as prey habitat or diet shifts in response to predation risk and predator diet shifts in response to the prey availability (reviewed in Werner and Peacor 2003).…”

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confidence: 99%

Evolutionary ecology of inducible morphological plasticity in predator–prey interaction: toward the practical links with population ecology

et al. 2009

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The outcome of species interactions is often strongly influenced by variation in the functional traits of the individuals participating. A rather large body of work demonstrates that inducible morphological plasticity in predators and prey can both influence and be influenced by species interaction strength with important consequences for individual fitness. Much of the past research in this area has focused on the ecological and evolutionary significance of trait plasticity by studying single predatorprey pairs and testing the performance of individuals having induced and non-induced phenotypes. This research has thus been critical in improving our understanding of the adaptive value of trait plasticity and its widespread occurrence across species and community types. More recently, researchers have expanded this foundation by examining how the complexity of organismal design and community-level properties can shape plasticity in functional traits. In addition, researchers have begun to merge evolutionary and ecological perspectives by linking trait plasticity to community dynamics, with particular attention on trait-mediated indirect interactions. Here, we review recent studies on inducible morphological plasticity in predators and their prey with an emphasis on internal and external constraints and how the nature of predatorprey interactions influences the expression of inducible phenotypes. In particular, we focus on multiple-trait plasticity, flexibility and modification of inducible plasticity, and reciprocal plasticity between predator and prey. Based on our arguments on these issues, we propose future research directions that should better integrate evolutionary and population studies and thus improve our understanding of the role of phenotypic plasticity in predator-prey population and community dynamics.3 Keywords

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Habitat effects on the relative importance of trait‐ and density‐mediated indirect interactions

Cited by 194 publications

References 52 publications

Predation in bird populations

Predation in bird populations

Scaling-up anti-predator phenotypic responses of prey: impacts over multiple generations in a complex aquatic community

Evolutionary ecology of inducible morphological plasticity in predator–prey interaction: toward the practical links with population ecology

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