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Behavioral Ecology Advance Access published online on October 12, 2006
Behavioral Ecology, doi:10.1093/beheco/arl064
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© The Author 2006. 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
Received December 18, 2005
Revised May 19, 2006
Accepted June 30, 2006

Article

A framework for determining the fitness consequences of antipredator behavior

Beverly C. Ajie 1 *, Lauren M. Pintor 2, Jason Watters 2, Jacob L. Kerby 2, John I. Hammond 2, and Andrew Sih 1

1 Center for Population Biology, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA; Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA
2 Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Beverly C. Ajie, E-mail: bcajie{at}ucdavis.edu


  Abstract

A recent review by Lind and Cresswell (2005) noted some important difficulties with quantifying the fitness consequences of antipredator behaviors. In this paper, we discuss the conceptual and analytical tools available to behavioral ecologists for approaching the question of adaptive value in the broader context of whole organism performance and total fitness. Because these tools already exist, we feel that determining the fitness consequences of antipredator behavior, or any behavior for that matter, is not intractable. Instead, it seems that both the challenge and the solution lie in linking the theoretical concepts of evolutionary biologists to the empirical data typically collected by behavioral ecologists. We hope that this paper will help forge this link as well as serve as a reminder that when grounded in natural history and an appropriate quantitative, conceptual framework, empirical studies can still provide detailed answers to the increasingly complex questions we ask.

Keywords: antipredator behavior; fitness; multivariate selection analysis; path analysis; phenotypic integration.
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