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- As predator numbers increase, prey populations decline, leading to a decrease in predators. This allows prey populations to recover, restarting the cycle. The snowshoe hare and Canadian lynx exemplify this ecological relationship through observed population fluctuations over time.
www.khanacademy.org/science/ap-biology/ecology-ap/community-ecology/v/predator-prey-cycle
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Apr 17, 2019 · The predator prey relationship consists of the interactions between two species and their consequent effects on each other. In the predator prey relationship, one species is feeding on the other species. The prey species is the animal being fed on, and the predator is the animal being fed.
Jun 19, 2020 · Predator-prey relationship. Definition. noun. An interaction between two organisms of unlike species in which one of them acts as a predator that captures and feeds on the other organism that serves as the prey. Supplement. In ecology, predation is a mechanism of population control.
Prey are the animals that are eaten by predators examples of prey are rabbits and giraffes. Depending on their position in the food chain, many animals can be both predator and prey. A stoat is a predator when it hunts rabbits, but it in turn is also prey when hunted by a fox.
Revise the key features of ecosystems, including prey and predators, producers, consumers and decomposers, as well as the water and carbon cycles.
- Overview
- Key points
- Introduction
- What counts as predation?
- Population dynamics of predators and prey
- Defense mechanisms against predation
Predators and prey. Adaptations of predators that help them catch prey, and adaptations of prey that help them escape predators.
•Predation is an interaction in which one organism, the predator, eats all or part of the body of another organism, the prey.
•Herbivory is a form of predation in which the prey organism is a plant.
•Predator and prey populations affect each other's dynamics. The sizes of predator and prey populations often go up and down in linked cycles.
•Predators and prey often have adaptations—beneficial features arising by natural selection—that are related to their interaction. For prey, these include various defenses and warning signals, such as bright coloration.
If you were asked to name one way that different species interact in nature, predation might be the first thing that comes to mind. After all, many of us have watched bears catching salmon, lions eating zebras, or octopuses capturing prey on the nature channel. In fact, this was the only television channel I was allowed to watch as a kid—I thought it was amazing!
In predation, a predator eats all or part of the body of its prey, with a positive (+) effect on the predator and a negative (-) effect on the prey. Nature shows on television highlight the drama of one animal killing another, but predation can also take less obvious forms. For instance, when a mosquito sucks a tiny bit of your blood, that can be viewed as a form of predation. So can herbivory, in which an animal—say, a cow or a bug—consumes part of a plant.1
A predator is an organism that consumes all or part of the body of another—living or recently killed—organism, which is its prey. "Living or recently killed" distinguishes predators from decomposers, such as fungi and bacteria that break down the leftover remains of organisms that have died.2
If we see a lion eating a zebra, we can feel comfortable in saying that the lion is a predator. In the broad definition, however, the zebra is too!1 A predator's prey can be an animal, but it can also be a plant or fungus. Nor does a predator necessarily have to kill its prey. Instead, as in a grazing cow or a bloodsucking mosquito, it may simply take a portion of the prey's body and leave it alive.1 A predator-prey relationship in which an animal or insect consumes a plant is called herbivory—herbi- means plant, and -vory means eating.
Populations of predators and prey in a community are not always constant over time. Instead, in many cases, they vary in cycles that appear to be related. The most frequently cited example of predator-prey dynamics is seen in the cycling of the lynx, a predator, and the snowshoe hare, its prey. Strikingly, this cycling can be seen in nearly 200-year-old data based on the number of animal pelts recovered by trappers in North American forests.
The population cycles of lynx and hare repeat themselves approximately every 10 years, with the lynx population lagging one to two years behind the hare population. The classic explanation is this: As hare numbers increase, there is more food available for the lynx, allowing the lynx population to increase as well. When the lynx population grows to a threshold level, however, it kills so many hares that the hare population begins to decline. This is followed by a decline in the lynx population due to scarcity of food. When the lynx population is low, the hare population begins to increase—due, at least in part, to low predation pressure—starting the cycle anew.
When we study a community, we must consider the evolutionary forces that have acted—and continue to act!—on the members of the various populations of the community. Species are not static but, rather, change over generations and can adapt to their environment through natural selection.
Predator and prey species both have adaptations—beneficial features arising by natural selection—that help them perform better in their role. For instance, prey species have defense adaptations that help them escape predation. These defenses may be mechanical, chemical, physical, or behavioral.
Mechanical defenses, such as the presence of thorns on plants or the hard shell on turtles, discourage animal predation and herbivory by causing physical pain to the predator or by physically preventing the predator from being able to eat the prey. Chemical defenses are produced by many animals as well as plants, such as the foxglove, which is extremely toxic when eaten. The millipede in the lower panel below has both chemical and mechanical defenses: when threatened, it curls into a defensive ball and makes a noxious substance that irritates eyes and skin.
Many species use their body shape and coloration to avoid being detected by predators. For instance, the crab spider has the coloration and body shape of a flower petal, which makes it very hard to see when it's standing still against the background of a real flower. Can you even see it in the picture below? It took me a minute! Another famous example is the chameleon, which can change its color to match its surroundings. Both of these are examples of camouflage, or avoiding detection by blending in with the background.
Some species use coloration in an opposite way—as a means to warn predators that they are not good to eat. For example, the strawberry poison dart frog shown below has bright coloration to warn predators that it is toxic, while the striped skunk, Mephitis mephitis, uses its bold pattern of stripes to warn predators of the unpleasant odor it produces.
Beyond these two examples, many species use bright or striking coloration to warn of a foul taste, a toxic chemical, or the ability to sting or bite. Predators that ignore this coloration and eat the organism will experience the bad taste or toxic chemicals may learn not to eat the species in the future. This type of defensive mechanism is called aposematic coloration, or warning coloration.
A. predator. is an animal that hunts, kills and eats other animals for food. Prey. is a term used to describe organisms that predators kill for food. Predator/prey relationships can be...
Predation is a relationship in which members of one species (the predator) consume members of another species (the prey). The lionesses and zebra in Figure below are classic examples of predators and prey.
