Abstract :
In the study of behavioral predator–prey interactions, predators have been treated as abstract sources of risk to which prey respond, rather than participants in a larger behavioral interaction. When predators are put back into the picture by allowing them to respond strategically to prey behavior, expectations about prey behavior can change. Something as simple as allowing predators to move in response to prey movements might not only (radically) alter standard expectations of prey behavior, but might also reveal new classes of behavioral phenomena that occur at large spatial scales. Similar revelations undoubtedly await many well-studied aspects of the behavioral interaction between predator and prey. Most examples studied to date, both theoretical and empirical, require attention from this ‘predatory’ perspective. Putting predators back into the picture will be challenging, but doing so might change the way in which biologists think about predator–prey interactions in general.
