Fish Biology, Fisheries and Aquaculture, Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Müggelseedamm 310, Berlin, 12587, Germany.
IBF-CNR, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Area di Ricerca San Cataldo, Via G. Moruzzi No. 1, Pisa, 56124, Italy.
Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc. 2023 Oct;98(5):1687-1711. doi: 10.1111/brv.12973. Epub 2023 May 18.
Group-hunting is ubiquitous across animal taxa and has received considerable attention in the context of its functions. By contrast much less is known about the mechanisms by which grouping predators hunt their prey. This is primarily due to a lack of experimental manipulation alongside logistical difficulties quantifying the behaviour of multiple predators at high spatiotemporal resolution as they search, select, and capture wild prey. However, the use of new remote-sensing technologies and a broadening of the focal taxa beyond apex predators provides researchers with a great opportunity to discern accurately how multiple predators hunt together and not just whether doing so provides hunters with a per capita benefit. We incorporate many ideas from collective behaviour and locomotion throughout this review to make testable predictions for future researchers and pay particular attention to the role that computer simulation can play in a feedback loop with empirical data collection. Our review of the literature showed that the breadth of predator:prey size ratios among the taxa that can be considered to hunt as a group is very large (<10 to >10 ). We therefore synthesised the literature with respect to these predator:prey ratios and found that they promoted different hunting mechanisms. Additionally, these different hunting mechanisms are also related to particular stages of the hunt (search, selection, capture) and thus we structure our review in accordance with these two factors (stage of the hunt and predator:prey size ratio). We identify several novel group-hunting mechanisms which are largely untested, particularly under field conditions, and we also highlight a range of potential study organisms that are amenable to experimental testing of these mechanisms in connection with tracking technology. We believe that a combination of new hypotheses, study systems and methodological approaches should help push the field of group-hunting in new directions.
群体狩猎在动物分类群中普遍存在，并且在其功能方面受到了相当多的关注。相比之下，关于捕食者如何成群结队地捕猎猎物的机制知之甚少。这主要是由于缺乏实验操纵，以及在高时空分辨率下量化多个捕食者在搜索、选择和捕获野生猎物时的行为的物流困难。然而，新的遥感技术的应用以及焦点分类群的扩大超越了顶级捕食者，为研究人员提供了一个很好的机会，可以准确地辨别出多个捕食者是如何一起狩猎的，而不仅仅是这样做是否为猎人提供了人均收益。我们在整个评论中结合了许多来自集体行为和运动的想法，为未来的研究人员提出了可测试的预测，并特别关注计算机模拟在与经验数据收集的反馈循环中可以发挥的作用。我们对文献的综述表明，能够被视为群体狩猎的捕食者与猎物大小比的分类群范围非常广泛（<10 到>10）。因此，我们根据这些捕食者与猎物的比例对文献进行了综合，发现它们促进了不同的狩猎机制。此外，这些不同的狩猎机制也与狩猎的特定阶段（搜索、选择、捕获）有关，因此我们根据这两个因素（狩猎阶段和捕食者与猎物的大小比）来组织我们的综述。我们确定了几种新颖的群体狩猎机制，这些机制在很大程度上未经测试，特别是在野外条件下，我们还强调了一系列潜在的研究生物体，这些生物体适合结合跟踪技术对这些机制进行实验测试。我们相信，新的假设、研究系统和方法学方法的结合应该有助于推动群体狩猎领域朝着新的方向发展。
