Prey availability and selective foraging in shorebirds
Prey availability and selective foraging in shorebirds
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DOI：
10.1006/anbe.1997.0713
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发表时间：
1998-06-01
期刊：
影响因子：
2.5
通讯作者：
Christy, JH
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Backwell, PRY;O'Hara, PD;Christy, JH
准确测量猎物的可用性对我们理解觅食行为，尤其是猎物的选择性至关重要。本研究通过对潮间带泥滩上滨鸟捕食招潮蟹的观察发现，猎物的可得性既取决于蟹类活动的时间变化，也取决于蟹类对觅食滨鸟的反应。我们的研究结果表明，没有具体说明猎物活动模式及其对捕食者的反应的猎物可用性的测量必然是不准确的。此外，我们的结果还表明，觅食选择性测试对测量猎物可用性的方式极其敏感，甚至可以在更准确的猎物可用性测量显示捕食者是非选择性时指示活跃的猎物选择性。由于对食物资源的不准确测量大大降低了我们发现食物偏好的能力，因此在测量猎物的可用性时，必须更加注意考虑猎物的活动模式及其对捕食者的反应。(C) 1998动物行为研究协会。
Accurate measurements of prey availability are vital to our understanding of foraging behaviour, particularly prey selectivity. In the present study, observations of shorebirds foraging for fiddler crabs on intertidal mudflats demonstrate that prey availability depends both on the temporal variation in crab activity and on the crabs' responses to the presence of foraging shorebirds. Our results suggest that measurements of prey availability that do not specifically account for prey activity patterns and their responses to predators are neccessarily inaccurate. Furthermore, our results also show that tests for foraging selectivity are extremely sensitive to the way in which prey availability is measured and can even indicate active prey selectivity when more accurate measures of prey availability show predators to be non-selective. Because inaccurate measures of food resources greatly reduce our ability to detect food preferences, greater care must be taken to account for prey activity patterns and their responses to predators in measurements of prey availability. (C) 1998 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.