Predation In Vertebrate Communities

Predation, one of the most dramatic interactions in animals' lives, has long fascinated ecologists. This volume presents carnivores, raptors and their prey in the complicated net of interrelationships, and shows them against the background of their biotic and abiotic settings. It is based on long-term research conducted in the best preserved woodland of Europe's temperate zone. The role of predation, whether limiting or regulating prey (ungulate, rodent, shrew, bird, and amphibian) populations, is quantified and compared to parts played by other factors: climate, food resources for prey, and availability of other potential resources for predators.

This monograph is about predation in vertebrate animal community. The studies were done in the seminatural terrains with transitional mixed forest within the European forest zone in Belarus. The result part was organised as a top-down flow: First, the community characteristics related to predators were estimated. I presented data on predator species richness, population density and biomass with special attention paid to the changes in predator species diversity occurred during the last two centuries and particularly in connection with the American mink and raccoon dog naturalization. Then, the main features of predator food niches were given, and the structure of various predator guilds and size structure in predators were analysed. The next part of the monograph was devoted to examining of community-important factors acting in semi-natural terrains. Such factors affected either the whole community or its marked fragment. The last quite a large part of the monograph consisted of many chapters which present more or less essential results on different predator species, and stresses hot questions of their population ecology.

This book addresses the fundamental issues of predator-prey interactions, with an emphasis on predation among arthropods, which have been better studied, and for which the database is more extensive than for the large and rare vertebrate predators. The book should appeal to ecologists interested in the broad issue of predation effects on communities.

When assuming the task of preparing a book such as this, one inevitably wonders why anyone would want to read it. I have always sympathized with Charles Elton's trenchant observation in his 1927 book that 'we have to face the fact that while ecological work is fascinating to do, it is unbearably dull to read about . . . ' And yet several good reasons do exist for producing a small volume on predation. The subject is interesting in its own right; no ecologist can deny that predation is one of the basic processes in the natural world. And the logical roots for much currently published reasoning about predation are remarkably well hidden; if one must do research on the subject, it helps not to be forced to start from first principles. A student facing predator-prey interactions for the first time is confronted with an amazingly diverse and sometimes inaccessible literature, with a ratio of wheat to chaff not exceeding 1: 5. A guide to the perplexed in this field does not exist at present, and I hope the book will serve that function. But apart from these more-or-Iess academic reasons for writing the book, I am forced to it by my conviction that predators are important in the ecological scheme. They playa critical role in the biological control of insects and other pests and are therefore of immediate economic concern.

The potential consequences of a predator-prey predators tend to do that increase or maximize prey interaction are probably more serious, especially capture and that prey tend to do to avoid being for the prey, than are the consequences of most captured? The second theme emphasized the eco competitive or parasite-host interactions. For this logical approach to predator-prey interactions. reason, the adaptations and tactics that prey show What are the environmental constraints that in to the foraging manoeuvers of their predators, and fluence the evolution of structures and behaviors the counteradaptations of their predators, are often involved in predation and its avoidance? How do pronounced and even spectacular. Predation may in these factors combine to produce particular ,fssem fact be a critical determinant of both the behavior blages of predators and prey with common adapta of individuals and of the functional and taxonomic tions? The 18 papers presented at the symposium, composition of fish assemblages. This possibility and the ones published in these proceedings, re was a major factor leading to the organization of present the varied approaches that researchers have the Behavioral Tactics symposium. The obvious taken in addressing these questions. necessity of feeding, the wealth of information Several topics were common to many presenta available on food and energy budgets of animals tions: four of these in particular deserve at least both in the laboratory and field, and the approach brief mention.

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