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Predation is a biological interaction in which one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill the host ) and parasitoidism (which always does, eventually).
Many predators forage most intensively at night, whereas others are active at midday and see best in full sun. The crepuscular habit may both reduce predation pressure, increasing the crepuscular populations, and offer better foraging opportunities to predators that increasingly focus their attention on crepuscular prey until a new balance is ...
Hyperpredation has been recorded in an ecosystem involving a bird (native prey), a cat (alien predator), and a rabbit (alien prey). Hyperpredation, also known as hypopredation, is when a generalist predator increases its predation pressure as a result of the introduction of a substitute prey. [1]
Although the term "bird of prey" could theoretically be taken to include all birds that actively hunt and eat other animals, [4] ornithologists typically use the narrower definition followed in this page, [5] excluding many piscivorous predators such as storks, cranes, herons, gulls, skuas, penguins, and kingfishers, as well as many primarily ...
Intraguild predation is common in nature and widespread across communities and ecosystems. [2] Intraguild predators must share at least one prey species and usually occupy the same trophic guild, and the degree of IGP depends on factors such as the size, growth, and population density of the predators, as well as the population density and behavior of their shared prey. [1]
Persistence predators can hunt prey many times their size. No extant members of Archelosauria are known to be long-distance hunters, though various bird species may employ speedy pursuit predation. Living crocodilians and carnivorous turtles are specialized ambush predators and rarely if ever chase prey over great distances.
Pursuit predation becomes a better strategy than ambush predation when the predator is faster than the prey. [2] Ambush predators use many intermediate strategies. For example, when a pursuit predator is faster than its prey over a short distance, but not in a long chase, then either stalking or ambush becomes necessary as part of the strategy. [2]
In the context of ecology, predation is considered to play a crucial and necessary role in ecosystems. [47] This has led some writers, such as Michael Pollan, to reject predation as being a moral problem at all, stating "predation is not a matter of morality or politics; it, also, is a matter of symbiosis". [48]