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Predation is a well‐studied driver of ecological selection on prey traits, which frequently drives divergence in anti‐predator performance across environments that vary in predation risk. However, predation also alters prey mortality regimes, where low predation risk often results in higher prey densities and consequently higher intensities of intraspecific resource competition. In addition, predation...
Modelling seed dispersal by animals seems straightforward; we need a way to keep track of the position on the animal through time and a clock for how long seeds travel with it. Mathematical models show how changing seed retention parameters can result in very different seed dispersal kernels, including fat‐tailed ones. When movement is more realistic, in the sense that it is tied to the spatial distribution...
Patterns of resource use by animals can clarify how ecological communities have assembled in the past, how they currently function and how they are likely to respond to future perturbations. Bumble bees (Hymentoptera: Bombus spp.) and their floral hosts provide a diverse yet tractable system in which to explore resource selection in the context of plant–pollinator networks. Under conditions of resource...
Global climate change threatens to substantially rearrange species interactions, yet we lack clear predictions on how these changes will cascade through communities. Many perturbations associated with climate change, such as droughts, will change resource levels, with consequences for species interactions and thus ecological network structure. Diet theory predicts foraging niche expansion when preferred...
Competition is a fundamental ecological process and an important mediating mechanism to natural selection and evolution. One form of competition, shadow competition, is evident when an approaching moving prey item is captured by a competing predator, earlier in the prey's trajectory, preventing it from reaching the attack range of a focal predator. The necessary definitional involvements of space...
Shadow competition is the interception of moving prey by a predator closer to its arrival source, preventing its availability to predators downstream. Shadow competition is likely common in nature, and unlike some other competition types, has a strong spatial component (with the exception of competition for space, which clearly also has a spatial component). We used an individual‐based spatially‐explicit...