Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Resource specialist herbivores may suppress antipredator strategies to access scarcely available key resources, while proactive antipredator behaviors should be favored by generalists or when resources are abundant. We quantified the relative effects of predation‐ (top‐down) and resource‐driven (bottom‐up) constraints on spatiotemporal patterns of landscape use by a prey community in a dynamic system under low predator abundance, and investigated how prey manage the risk posed by predators with different hunting strategies. We fitted Royle–Nichols co‐abundance models to camera‐trapping data collected between 2017 and 2019 in Bicuar National Park (Angola), to assess spatial association/segregation across predator–prey dyads, while accounting for the effects of water and food availability during dry and wet seasons. We further estimated pairwise seasonal differences in diel activity overlap between predator and prey. We failed to detect spatiotemporal proactive antipredator responses either toward the cursorial or ambush predator. The community‐wide predator–prey association patterns we found support that predation pressure is insufficient to displace prey from their preferred habitats or to adjust their endogenous clock, and support predominantly bottom‐up regulated behaviors. We suggest that, in landscapes where predator density is low, limited perception of risk may prevent the employment of proactive antipredator behavior.
Source: Ecosphere
DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.4969
Language: English
Subfield: Ecology
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Life on land
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,210
Awards: Ampliação da Infraestrutura Tecnológica do INESC TEC para a Transformação Digital da Indústria (iiLab), G2375406851, G2806614899, Rede de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Biologia Evolutiva, G323769159, G4316116677, G4487599550, G5485649731, G7501315074, Rede de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Biologia Evolutiva, G96847669
OpenAlex ID: W4404328852