What are the different types of predator prey relationships and factors affecting predator prey relationship?
Common types of predator prey relationships include: carnivorism, herbivory, parasitism / parasitoidism, cannabilism, scavenging. Factors affecting these relationships include behaviour of the predator/prey such as hunting method, prey selection etc., feeding style eg. polyphagous, as well as enemy-risk effects, competition, prey availability and intraguild predation.
Predator and prey is lion and zebra, bear and fish, and fox and rabbit. The words "predator" and "prey" are almost always used to mean only animals that eat animals, but the same concept also applies to plants: Bear and berry, rabbit and lettuce, grasshopper and leaf. The individual steps of a predation event start with the search for prey and escalate along a series of steps including: encounter, detection, attack, and capture. After successful prey ingestion this cycle repeats itself.Logic and mathematical theory suggest that when prey are numerous their predators increase in numbers, reducing the prey population, which in turn causes predator number to decline. The prey population eventually recovers, starting a new cycle. From a functional standpoint, the diversity of predator hunting behavior can be organized into three broad categories: ambush, ballistic interception, or pursuit. Hunting modes integrate predator traits in different ways. Ambush predators lie in wait for prey. The relationships between predators and prey play an important role in structuring ecological communities, with predators influencing the dynamics of their prey in ways that cascade through ecosystems to affect processes such as productivity, biodiversity, nutrient cycling, disease dynamics, carbon storage, and more. Predator-prey numbers interact due to: availability of food, which increases predator numbers when high but reduces them when low; concealment, which means that some prey survive by hiding from predators; predator movement to new areas when prey numbers are low.Predatory interactions happen when one organism hunts and eats another organism. The organism doing the eating is a predator. The organism being eaten is the prey. Mutualistic interactions happen when two organisms of different species benefit from interacting with each other.When preys are high, predators increase and reduce the number of prey by predation. When predators are low, prey decrease and thus reduce the number of predators by starvation. These predator/prey relationships thereby promote stability in ecosystems and enable them to maintain large numbers of specie. There is interdependence between the predator and the prey. Any change in numbers of prey affects the numbers of predators and vice versa. In a healthy, balanced ecosystem the numbers of predators and prey remain fairly constant. The predator–prey relationship is an example of a density-dependent limiting factor. A density- dependent limiting factor affects the population density (number of organisms per a given area) when it reaches a certain level. Other examples of density-dependent limiting factors are competition, parasitism, and disease.
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