Effects of predator-rey-body-mass ratios and habitat structure on functional responses

功能反应描述捕食者的人均消耗率依赖于猎物丰度(猎物依赖的功能反应)，或捕食者和猎物的丰度(捕食者依赖的功能反应)。这些模型的各种参数随生境结构的不同而不同。不同的功能反应模型预测了非常不同的消耗率，而对自然食物网中捕食者和猎物种群之间的能量流动的分析需要描述每个相互作用的功能反应。天然食物网中大量的捕食者-猎物相互作用使这一任务变得棘手，从而严重限制了我们对复杂食物网(“定量食物网”)中能量流动的理解。在这个应用中，我们提出了一种基于捕食者-被捕食者体重比和栖息地结构来估计捕食者和捕食者依赖的功能反应参数的方法。将进行以地面蜘蛛和甲虫为捕食者，以弹尾虫、苍蝇和甲虫幼虫为猎物的实验室实验，以确保我们的结果在不同栖息地结构下的不同捕食者和猎物类型的不同组合中具有广泛的普遍性。确定体重比对功能反应的影响的共性将是朝着复杂食物网中定量能量流动的一般模型迈出的重要一步。

Functional responses describe the per capita consumption rates of predators in dependence on prey abundance (prey-dependent functional responses), or predator and prey abundances (predator dependent functional responses). The various parameters of these models vary with habitat structure. Different functional response models predict very different consumption rates, and analyses of energy fluxes between predator and prey populations in natural food webs require descriptions of the functional response of each interaction. The high number of predator-prey interactions in natural food webs makes this task intractable thus seriously limiting our understanding of energy fluxes in complex food webs (“quantitative food webs”). In this application, we present an approach to estimating the parameters of prey- and predator-dependent functional responses based on predator-prey body-mass ratios and habitat structure. Laboratory experiments with ground-dwelling spiders and beetles as predators and collembolans, flies and beetle larvae as prey will be carried out to ensure a broad generality of our results across different combinations of predator and prey types under varying habitat structure. Identifying generalities in body-mass ratio effects on functional response will be an important step towards a general model of quantitative energy fluxes in complex food webs.