Is there safety‐in‐numbers for prey?

Abstract

The abundance of prey affects the rate of predation, but little consensus exists on whether this enhances or reduces per capita mortality. Studies of aggregating prey in marine habitats generally emphasise that the probability of predation of any individual is the reciprocal of the number of prey within a school. A field experiment tested the alternative hypotheses that predation by predatory fish on schooling prey (1) increased with an increase in the number of prey per school and that this caused (2) survival to be lower in schools with more individuals. The number of prey (juvenile Acanthochromis polyacanthus) per school was manipulated in replicate treatments with natural densities of large predatory fish (open plots) and treatments without large predatory fish (exclusion cages). Large predatory fish preyed on juveniles in a density‐dependent manner and this was the key source of density‐dependent mortality in plots open to all predators. There was some suggestion that small predatory fish also prey on juveniles in a density‐dependent manner, but this was weak and did not translate into density‐dependent mortality of juveniles. It would appear that aggregation of prey may be a successful strategy against predation from some predators, but not always every predator, or all predators in combination.