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Behavioral Ecology Advance Access originally published online on August 12, 2009
Behavioral Ecology 2009 20(6):1168-1174; doi:10.1093/beheco/arp110
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Individual behavior and survival: the roles of predator avoidance, foraging success, and vigilance

Alex Sansoma, Johan Lindb and Will Cresswella

a School of Biology, Bute Building, University of St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9TS, UK b Department of Zoology, Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden

Address correspondence to A. Sansom, School of Biology, Bute Building, University of St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9TS, UK. E-mail: as567{at}st-andrews.ac.uk.


  Abstract

Variation in antipredation behavior should translate into variation in survival. Effective general defenses, such as predator avoidance, decrease the likelihood that an individual is attacked and should therefore reduce selection on behaviors that enhance probability of escape on attack. Escape behaviors become important if animals cannot avoid attack. We investigated the relative effects of avoidance and escape enhancing behaviors on the survival of juvenile redshanks, Tringa totanus, over 2 winters. We predicted that avoidance behavior should be the primary behavioral correlate of survival, but when forced, by starvation risk, into areas where risk of attack is much higher, behaviors that reduce risk of capture once attacked should also promote survival. We found that reducing exposure to attack was most important for increasing survival and that increased vigilance and foraging success rate only increased survival for individuals that spent more time in high-risk areas. Use of the high-risk area and survival varied between years, suggesting that variation in starvation risk (i.e., colder winters) may provide a mechanism for selection on "capture-reducing" antipredation behaviors to be maintained because predator avoidance, the most effective antipredation behavior, is not then possible.

Key words: avoidance, foraging efficiency, predation risk, survival, vigilance.

Received 20 November 2008; revised 22 June 2009; accepted 23 June 2009.


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