The effects of distant predators – new paper in Journal of Animal Ecology

Two years ago, Beth Turner did a MSc thesis in the lab and performed a field experiment in Nicaragua together with PhD student Mathil Vandromme. The goal was to demonstrate that prey species do not just respond to predators that are present in a certain habitat, but also to predators elsewhere in the landscape. To test this we used landscapes of bromeliads that have a central tank that provides aquatic habitat.  As a predator we used a caged predatory larva of the mosquito Toxorynchites, a ferocious predator of mosquito larvae including members of its own species.

We could confirm that effects of predators in a natural ecosystem can extend beyond the patch in which the predator is present and that the presence or absence of remote predator effects on habitat selection depends on the distance to predators. The notion that perceived habitat quality can depend on conditions in neighbouring patches forces habitat selection studies to adopt a landscape perspective and account for the effects of both present and remote predators when explaining community assembly in metacommunities.

The work has been published in Journal of Animal Ecology

https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1365-2656.13239