Northfield Tobin D, Barton Brandon T, Schmitz Oswald J
Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Studies College of Marine and Environmental Sciences James Cook University Cairns QLD Australia.
Department of Biological Sciences Mississippi State University Starkville MS USA.
Ecol Evol. 2017 Jul 28;7(17):6935-6948. doi: 10.1002/ece3.3250. eCollection 2017 Sep.
Predator-prey interaction is inherently spatial because animals move through landscapes to search for and consume food resources and to avoid being consumed by other species. The spatial nature of species interactions necessitates integrating spatial processes into food web theory and evaluating how predators combine to impact their prey. Here, we present a spatial modeling approach that examines emergent multiple predator effects on prey within landscapes. The modeling is inspired by the habitat domain concept derived from empirical synthesis of spatial movement and interactions studies. Because these principles are motivated by synthesis of short-term experiments, it remains uncertain whether spatial contingency principles hold in dynamical systems. We address this uncertainty by formulating dynamical systems models, guided by core habitat domain principles, to examine long-term multiple predator-prey spatial dynamics. To describe habitat domains, we use classical niche concepts describing resource utilization distributions, and assume species interactions emerge from the degree of overlap between species. The analytical results generally align with those from empirical synthesis and present a theoretical framework capable of demonstrating multiple predator effects that does not depend on the small spatial or temporal scales typical of mesocosm experiments, and help bridge between empirical experiments and long-term dynamics in natural systems.
捕食者与猎物的相互作用本质上是空间性的，因为动物在景观中移动以寻找和消耗食物资源，并避免被其他物种捕食。物种相互作用的空间性质要求将空间过程纳入食物网理论，并评估捕食者如何共同影响它们的猎物。在这里，我们提出了一种空间建模方法，用于研究景观中多种捕食者对猎物的综合影响。该建模方法的灵感来源于从空间运动和相互作用研究的实证综合中得出的栖息地领域概念。由于这些原理是由短期实验的综合所推动的，所以空间偶然性原理在动态系统中是否成立仍不确定。我们通过构建以核心栖息地领域原理为指导的动态系统模型来解决这一不确定性，以研究长期的多种捕食者 - 猎物空间动态。为了描述栖息地领域，我们使用描述资源利用分布的经典生态位概念，并假设物种间的相互作用源于物种之间的重叠程度。分析结果总体上与实证综合的结果一致，并提供了一个理论框架，能够证明多种捕食者的影响，且不依赖于中宇宙实验典型的小空间或时间尺度，有助于在实证实验和自然系统中的长期动态之间架起桥梁。
