Abstract
The risk of consumption is a pervasive aspect of ecology and recent work has focused on synthesis of consumer-resource interactions (e.g., enemy-victim ecology). Despite this, theories pertaining to the timing and magnitude of defenses in animals and plants have largely developed independently. However, both animals and plants share the common dilemma of uncertainty of attack, can gather information from the environment to predict future attacks and alter their defensive investment accordingly. Here, we present a novel, unifying framework based on the way an organism's ability to defend itself during an attack can shape their pre-attack investment in defense. This framework provides a useful perspective on the nature of information use and variation in defensive investment across the sequence of attack-related events, both within and among species. It predicts that organisms with greater proportional fitness loss if attacked will gather and respond to risk information earlier in the attack sequence, while those that have lower proportional fitness loss may wait until attack is underway. This framework offers a common platform to compare and discuss consumer effects and provides novel insights into the way risk information can propagate through populations, communities, and ecosystems.
Highlights
Proportional fitness loss and the timing of defensive investment: a cohesive framework across animals and plants
We suggest that a simple framework based on characteristics that prey and plants share, i.e., differences in proportional fitness loss across the sequence of attackrelated events and the ability to gather and use information about the probability of attack, can add to our understanding of predator-prey and herbivore-plant interactions and provide insight into the variation in defense of both prey and plants
A variety of approaches may be used, comparative studies that use a range of taxa and combinations of risk information cues will be promising in helping disentangle the role of PFL and information in affecting allocation to defense
Summary
Policy Articles, as set forth in our Terms of Use. Michael J. Maud CO Ferrari, Richard Karban, Evan L. Proportional fitness loss and the timing of defensive investment: a cohesive framework across animals and plants.
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