Compensation and density dependence
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Conservation Biology, Ecology, Environmental Sciences, Zoology
- Keywords
- density dependence, compensatory mortality, compensation, harvesting, predation, predator-prey interactions, seasonality, Hydra effect, overcompensation, population dynamics
- Copyright
- © 2016 Boyce et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2016. Compensation and density dependence. PeerJ Preprints 4:e1944v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1944v1
Abstract
Compensatory mortality is a key concept in sustainable resource development and predator-prey theory. Two driving mechanisms underlie compensatory mortality: seasonality and density dependence. Indeed, density dependence is fundamental to being able to achieve a sustainable harvest policy and is also central to stabilizing predator-prey systems. An intuitive view of compensatory mortality promoted by Paul Errington is the notion of an annual doomed surplus of recruits produced each year that can be harvested or killed by predators with no consequence to the spring breeding densities. An interaction between density dependence and harvest or predation mortality can result in overcompensation or the Hydra Effect where survival and/or population size is actually increased by low to moderate removals.
Author Comment
This is an abstract which has been accepted for the "Predator-Prey Dynamics" conference.