Challenges for the Future of Functional Response Research

Abstract

Being recognized for more than 70 years and estimated thousands of times, with numerous analyses of compilations, it would seem there is a lot we should know about functional responses. Indeed, we know some of the ways in which functional responses vary, how foraging mechanisms combine to determine, to at least some extent, functional response parameters, and how functional responses influence community interactions from biocontrol impacts to invasive predators to food webs. I suggest, however, that there remains a considerable amount that we do not know, in particular for field-based functional responses, multi-species functional responses, individual variation, behavioral mechanisms, and the impact and evolution of underlying traits. I suggest these areas should be high priorities for future work on functional responses.