IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/beheco/v25y2014i4p773-784..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Effects of predation risk on group size, vigilance, and foraging behavior in an African ungulate community

Author

Listed:
  • Scott Creel
  • Paul Schuette
  • David Christianson

Abstract

Predators alter prey dynamics by direct killing and through the costs of antipredator responses or risk effects. Antipredator behavior includes proactive responses to long-term variation in risk (e.g., grouping patterns) and reactive responses to short-term variation in risk (e.g., intense vigilance). In a 3-year field study, we measured variation in antipredator responses and the foraging costs of these responses for 5 ungulates (zebra, wildebeest, Grant’s gazelle, impala, and giraffe) that comprised more than 90% of the prey community available to the 2 locally dominant predators, lions and spotted hyenas. Using a model-selection approach, we examined how vigilance and group size responded to attributes of the predator, prey, and environment. We found that 1) the strength of antipredator responses was affected by attributes of the predator, prey, and environment in which they met; 2) grouping and vigilance were complementary responses; 3) grouping was a proactive response to the use of dangerous habitats, whereas vigilance was a reactive response to finer cues about predation risk; 4) increased vigilance caused a large reduction in foraging for some species (but not all); and 5) there was no clear relationship between direct predation rates and the foraging costs of antipredator responses. Broadly, our results show that antipredator responses and their costs vary in a complex manner among prey species, the predators they face, and the environment in which they meet.

Suggested Citation

  • Scott Creel & Paul Schuette & David Christianson, 2014. "Effects of predation risk on group size, vigilance, and foraging behavior in an African ungulate community," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 25(4), pages 773-784.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:beheco:v:25:y:2014:i:4:p:773-784.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/aru050
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kumbhakar, Ruma & Hossain, Mainul & Pal, Nikhil, 2024. "Dynamics of a two-prey one-predator model with fear and group defense: A study in parameter planes," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    2. Buddi S. Poudel & Peter G. Spooner & Alison Matthews, 2015. "Temporal shift in activity patterns of Himalayan marmots in relation to pastoralism," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 26(5), pages 1345-1351.
    3. Yang Zhao & Chun-Xiao Huang & Yiming Gu & Yacong Zhao & Wenjie Ren & Yutong Wang & Jinjin Chen & Na N. Guan & Jianren Song, 2024. "Serotonergic modulation of vigilance states in zebrafish and mice," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-18, December.
    4. Barman, Dipesh & Roy, Jyotirmoy & Alrabaiah, Hussam & Panja, Prabir & Mondal, Sankar Prasad & Alam, Shariful, 2021. "Impact of predator incited fear and prey refuge in a fractional order prey predator model," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    5. Hossain, Mainul & Kumbhakar, Ruma & Pal, Nikhil, 2022. "Dynamics in the biparametric spaces of a three-species food chain model with vigilance," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:beheco:v:25:y:2014:i:4:p:773-784.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/beheco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.