Dynamic fine-tuning of anti-predator behaviour in snowshoe hares illustrates the context dependence of risk effects.

Abstract

Research Highlight: Shiratsuru, S., & Pauli, J. N. (2024). Food-safety trade-offs drive dynamic behavioural antipredator responses among snowshoe hares. Journal of Animal Ecology, DOI: 10.1111/1365-2656.14183. Predation-risk effects are known to be context dependent, with impacts of perceived predation threat on individual antipredator responses, prey population demography, species interactions and community organization hinging on traits of the prey, the predator(s) and setting of the interaction. Yet, few empirical studies to date have simultaneously explored how these three drivers shape contingency in antipredator behaviour, the key first step in the process by which predation-risk effects play out, especially in free-living vertebrates. In a new study, Shiratsuru & Pauli (2024) address this knowledge deficit by showing that snowshoe hares (Lepus americanus) trade foraging for anti-predator vigilance dynamically as a function of winter food availability (a proxy for individual energetic state), the timing and intensity of predator activity, and environmental properties associated with elevated vulnerability to predator-induced mortality, notably including coat colour mismatch caused by variation in snow cover. These results offer new insight into the complexity of predation-risk effects and should serve as a guide for research aiming to better understand the expression of these effects under varying circumstances.