How individual behavioral variation during predator-prey interactions determines invasion success

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Invasive species are an increasing problem in our globalized world. Despite their potential dire consequences our ability to predict and limit the impact of future invasion events is still surprisingly limited. Each invasion is characterized by a unique combination of native and invading species. Therefore species interactions, especially predator-prey interactions are at the heart of understanding invasions. There is a large and growing body of work now showing that even within the same species individuals may differ from each other in important functional traits such as behaviour. This sort of consistent individual variation in behaviour, or behavioural types, was typically ignored in traditional ecological theory predicting species relationships and its explicit consideration in future work stands to dramatically improve our understanding of how species interact with each other, and through this, the success of future invasions. Here I propose an integrative project designed to test how behavioural types within native communities, especially native predators, influence a potential invasion by a novel prey species. I will exploit a well-developed simplified aquatic food web with European perch as the top predator, two amphipod species, one native and one invasive, as intermediate predators and leaf litter and smaller invertebrates as basal resources. Using controlled laboratory experiments I will elucidate the behavioural mechanisms underpinning the individual perchs interactions with the native and invasive amphipods. Then replicated pond mesocosms will allow me to test how these behavioural mechanisms play out under more natural settings. Finally, using this data, I will develop a food-web model to understand how native predators influence the invasion process which will ultimately be used to predict future invasions in any system where behaviour of the predators and prey is known. By uniting these two topics, invasion biology and consistent individual differences in behaviour, we stand to not only improve our fundamental understanding of the processes governing species interactions, but importantly enhance our ability to predict and mitigate future invasion events.