We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Scrounging behavior regulates population dynamics.
- Authors
Coolen, Isabelle; Giraldeau, Luc-Alain; Vickery, William
- Abstract
The integration of behavioral and population ecology is necessary when behavior both feeds into demographic parameters and depends on population parameters. We show that scrounging behavior, the exploitation of others’ resources, can affect both demographic parameters and population dynamics, including the stability of interactions with prey. Scrounging is a common tactic and its pay-offs exhibit both density- and frequency-dependence. We demonstrate that scrounging can act as a population regulator through its effects on individuals’ reproductive rate and mortality. We also explore its effects on predator-prey population dynamics and show that the presence of scrounging predators allows an increased predator population size and contributes to the regulation of both predator and prey populations. Behavioral ecologists will appreciate that although scrounging is often pictured as imposing a social foraging cost to group membership, at the population level it also allows higher numbers of both prey and predators to coexist at equilibrium.
- Subjects
ENVIRONMENTAL sciences; POPULATION; ECOLOGY; PREDATORY animals; POPULATION biology; MORTALITY; DYNAMICS; ANIMAL populations; ECOLOGISTS
- Publication
Oikos, 2007, Vol 116, Issue 3, p533
- ISSN
0030-1299
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/j.2006.0030-1299.15213.x