Aims The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of climate on predator–prey dynamics. Predator–prey interactions may be represented by mechanistic models that comprise a deterministic skeleton with stochastic climatic forcing. This systematic interaction may help to simplify forecasting the potentially complex consequences of warming on interaction strengths and food web stability.Ĭontext Predator dynamics may be related to prey abundance and influenced by environmental effects, such as climate. Our results indicate that (i) predator–prey body-size ratios decrease with predator size at below-average temperatures and increase with predator size at above-average temperatures, and (ii) that the effect of temperature on predator–prey body-size structure will be stronger at small and large body sizes and relatively weak at intermediate sizes. We found that prey size selection depends on predator body size, temperature and the interaction between the two. Here, we use the largest reported dataset for marine predator–prey interactions to assess how temperature affects predator–prey body-size relationships among different habitats ranging from the tropics to the poles. The consequences of these effects for food web structure are unclear because the relationships between temperature and aspects of food web structure such as predator–prey body-size relationships are unknown. The increased temperature associated with climate change may have important effects on body size and predator–prey interactions. Research shows that examining predator–prey interactions through the lens of an adaptive evolutionary-ecological game offers a foundation to explain variety in the nature and strength of predator–prey interactions observed in different ecological contexts.
These interactions in turn can have dynamic feedbacks that can change the context of the predator–prey interaction, causing predator and prey to adapt their traits-through phenotypically plastic or rapid evolutionary responses-and the nature of their interaction. Moreover, trait responses can be triggered by non-consumptive predator–prey interactions elicited by responses of prey to risk of predation. Evidence shows that the nature and strength of many interactions are dependent upon the relative magnitude of predator and prey functional traits. Here, I discuss recent advances in this functional trait approach. Such traits include predator and prey body size, predator and prey personality, predator hunting mode, prey mobility, prey anti-predator behavior, and prey physiological stress. Functional traits are defined as any morphological, behavioral, or physiological trait of an organism associated with a biotic interaction. Recent approaches have begun to explore predator–prey relationships in terms of an evolutionary-ecological game in which predator and prey adapt to each other through reciprocal interactions involving context-dependent expression of functional traits that influence their biomechanics. Classic approaches have tried to understand and predict these relationships in terms of consumptive interactions between predator and prey species, but characterizing the interaction this way is insufficient to predict the complexity and context dependency inherent in predator–prey relationships. Predator–prey relationships are a central component of community dynamics. This difference suggests contrasting ontogenetic foraging opportunities between adults and larvae: a lack of large relative prey sizes for the largest adult predators, and a greater ability of larvae to include larger prey items in their diet as they grow. Distinct patterns in the size scaling of this measure of trophic niche breadth were identified using quantile regression: converging relationships were common among adults but absent among larvae. Using a large database of predator and prey lengths for marine aquatic predators, I found the expected positive wedge-shaped relationship between predator length and prey length and a negative converging relationship between relative prey length (prey–predator length ratio = a measure of trophic niche breadth) and predator length. Most previous studies have used prey mass to examine the relationships between predator size and prey size however, using prey lengths may provide a different perspective, particularly for gape-limited fishes. Body size is a critical feature of the ecology of most organisms and has been used to describe and understand predator–prey interactions in both terrestrial and aquatic environments.
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