Predicting predator-prey interactions across space

I've been part of an exciting collaboration with colleagues at Yale and UC Berkeley to create a new framework for predicting how predators and prey will interact across space based on characteristics like hunting mode and space use. Our new paper in Ecology (free download here) discusses how the concept of the habitat domain can be used to consider spatial context when predicting spatial interactions.

This conceptual theory can be used to predict how different spatial relations of predators and prey could lead to different emergent multiple predator-prey interactions such as whether predator consumptive or non-consumptive effects should dominate, and whether intraguild predation, predator interference or predator complementarity are expected. We elaborate on how modern technology and statistical approaches for animal movement analysis could be used to test the conceptual theory, using experimental or quasi-experimental analyses at landscape scales.

Our hope is that this new framework will encourage more research to empirically test whether such characteristics can be used to anticipate how predators and prey will interact, to inform management and conservation.

Fig 4. Steps for quantifying habitat domains of prey (left) and predators (center), and associated methods.