What can behavioral ecology contribute to understanding how predator and prey interactions affect food webs?

Growing empirical evidence is showing that the trade-offs prey make between foraging and avoiding predation risk can significantly shape food web dynamics. An open question is what is the minimum amount of behavioral detail needed for food web models to adequately depict real food webs. Models incorporating prey behavior have predominantly assumed that optimal prey behavior is set by potential prey foraging rates and mortality rates that are functions of resource and predator densities respectively. However, models and experiments from behavioral ecology have shown that how prey respond to variable predation risk can depend on more than just current levels of risk and reward. I will present evidence of how prey behavioral responses and time lags in those responses are shaped by temporal patterns of predation risk and prey uncertainty about current and future levels of risk. In addition, predator and prey interactions may be shaped by spatial and behavioral interactive games. In these cases the behavior of prey is shaped not only by the current presence and behavior of predators, but also by the potential responses of predators to prey behavior. Therefore, short-term observations of how prey behave in the presence and absence of predators may be missing the persistent effects of predators on prey behavior and spatial distributions. I will present how these realities of predator and prey interactions may alter how the details of prey and predator behavior should be incorporated into models of food web dynamics.