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A snowshoe hare, one of the other species impacting the wolf and moose on Isle Royale. Once a moose is brought down and killed, wolves have to compete with scavenging ravens. Ravens are tenacious scavengers that can easily dodge the strike of a wolf and are unbothered by them.
Firstly, the dynamics of predator and prey populations have a tendency to oscillate. Fluctuating numbers of predators and prey have been observed in natural populations, such as the lynx and snowshoe hare data of the Hudson's Bay Company [6] and the moose and wolf populations in Isle Royale National Park. [7]
If predators learn while foraging, but do not reject prey before they accept one, the functional response becomes a function of the density of all prey types. This describes predators that feed on multiple prey and dynamically switch from one prey type to another. This behaviour can lead to either a type II or a type III functional response.
A major predator of the snowshoe hare is the Canada lynx. Historical records of animals caught by fur hunters over hundreds of years show the lynx and hare numbers rising and falling in a cycle, which has made the hare known to biology students worldwide as a case study of the relationship between numbers of predators and their prey. [4] [5] [6]
Predators receive a reproductive payoff, e, for consuming prey, and die at rate u. Making predation pressure a function of the ratio of prey to predators contrasts with the prey-dependent Lotka–Volterra equations, where the per capita effect of predators on the prey population is simply a function of the magnitude of the prey population g(N).
Sometimes there is debate whether the muskox or the Arctic hare is the primary prey for the hare-wolf-muskox predator-prey system. Studies provide evidence that the muskoxen are indeed their primary prey because wolf presence and reproduction seems to be higher when muskox is more available than higher hare availability. [23]
Consumer–resource interactions are the core motif of ecological food chains or food webs, [1] and are an umbrella term for a variety of more specialized types of biological species interactions including prey-predator (see predation), host-parasite (see parasitism), plant-herbivore and victim-exploiter systems.
The wolf must give chase and gain on its fleeing prey, slow it down by biting through thick hair and hide, and then disable it enough to begin feeding. [4] After chasing and then confronting a large prey animal, the wolf makes use of its 6 cm (2 + 1 ⁄ 2 in) fangs and its powerful masseter muscles to deliver a bite force of 28 kg/cm 2 (400 lbf/in 2), which is capable of breaking open the ...