
In Predation: direct and indirect impacts on aquatic communities (W.C. (1987b) Indirect interactions between species that share a predator: varieties of indirect effects. (1987a) The functional responses of adaptive consumers of two resources. (1982) Functional responses of optimal foragers. The small range of parameter combinations and initial population densities leading to stable equilibria suggest that adaptive diet selection is unlikely to be a ubiquitous stabilizing factor in trophic interactions.Ībrams, P. Locally stable systems with adaptive predators are often globally unstable, converging on limit cycles for many initial population densities.

Hence, typical patterns of partial prey preference are more stabilizing than perfect optimal diet selection. Local stability of systems with adaptive predator behaviour is inversely related to the goodness of fit to optimal diet choice criteria. This occurs mainly when alternate prey have low enough profitability that predators cannot sustain themselves indefinitely when feeding on alternate prey.

For a small set of parameter values, systems with adaptive predators can be locally stable whereas systems with specialist predators would be unstable. This results in the per capita predation risk being positively density-dependent near points of diet expansion. Adaptive predator behaviour leads to functional responses that are influenced by the relative abundance of alternate prey.

We compare the dynamics of predator-prey systems with specialist predators or adaptive generalist predators that base diet choice on energy-maximizing criteria.
