The Role of Behaviour and Morphology in the Selection of Prey by Pike

  • Paul J. B. Hart
  • Stellan F. Hamrin
Conference paper
Part of the NATO ASI Series book series (volume 20)

Abstract

Explaining and predicting prey selection has been one of the major tasks of optimal foraging models (Hart, 1986; Stephens & Krebs, 1986). Most models assume that optimal choice is brought about by some behavioural process. For example the basic prey model as used by Werner and Hall (1974), assumes that animals are able to rank prey by their profitabilities and to make decisions about which prey type to include in the diet. There is no implication from the models that an animal must be able to calculate complex optimisation relations but in so far as the forager uses a rule of thumb to make a foraging decision, behaviour is the main process involved (Stephens & Krebs, 1986).

Keywords

Search Time Prey Type Prey Size Handling Time Large Prey 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1990

Authors and Affiliations

  • Paul J. B. Hart
    • 1
  • Stellan F. Hamrin
    • 2
  1. 1.Department of ZoologyUniversity of LeicesterLeicesterUK
  2. 2.Department of Ecology, LimnologyUniversity of LundLundSweden

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