How Species Interact Altering the Standard View on Trophic Ecology [Hardcover]

Understanding the functioning of ecosystems requires the understanding of the interactions between consumer species and their resources. How do these interactions affect the variations of population abundances? How do population abundances determine the impact of predators on their prey? The view defended in this book is that the null model that most ecologists tend to use is inappropriate because it assumes that the amount of prey consumed by each predator is insensitive to the number of conspecifics. The authors argue that the amount of prey available per predator, rather than the absolute abundance of prey, is the basic determinant of the dynamics of predation. This so-called ratio dependence is shown to be a much more reasonable null model.

Preface

1. Alternative theories of trophic interaction
1.1 Monod vs. Contois: resource-dependent and ratio-dependent bacteria
1.2 The standard predator-prey model of ecology
1.3 The Arditi-Ginzburg ratio-dependent model
1.4 Donor control and ratio dependence
1.5 Predator-dependent models
1.6 What happens at low consumer density? The gradual interference hypothesis
1.7 Biomass conversion

2. Direct measurements of the functional response
2.1 Insect predators and parasitoids, snails, fish, and others: laboratory measurements
2.1.1 Manipulating the consumer density alone
2.1.2 Measuring interference in the presence of a saturating functional response
2.1.3 The Arditi-Ak?akaya predator-dependent model
2.1.4 Application to literature data
2.1.5 Does interference increase gradually?
2.2 Wasps and chrysomelids: a field experiment
2.3 Wolves and moose: field observations
2.3.1 Wolf social structure and spatial scales
2.3.2 Model fitting and model selection methods
2.3.3 The wolf-moose functional response is ratio-dependent
2.4 Additional direct tests of ratio dependence
2.4.1 Bark beetles
2.4.2 Shrimps
2.4.3 Egg parasitoids
2.4.4 Benthic flatlsì