Multi-species Functional Responses

Abstract

In this chapter, I extend the standard functional response model to communities in which predators are foraging on more than one kind of prey. This is an essential component of real foraging scenarios that is not yet widely represented in the functional response literature but is crucial to understanding food webs generally. Here I develop the multi-species functional response and describe it using my particular perspective on how we understand these functions in general. I review the importance of considering multiple prey types and the limited empirical work estimating multi-species functional responses.