Meeting Abstract

S1-1.1  Friday, Jan. 4  SEARCH GAMES IN REALISTIC PREDATOR-PREY INTERACTIONS CASAS, Jerome; University of Tours (FRANCE) casas@univ-tours.fr

I will present two cases of predator-prey search games, wolf-spiders and wood crickets on one hand and a microlepidopteron leafminer and its parasitoid on the other hand. Much is known about the sensory ecology background as well as the role of the arena, the physical environment in which the game is played, for these two systems. Air flow sensing in crickets and vibration perception in the microlepidopteron larvae enable prey to escape. These are unintended cues left by the foraging predators. Both the litter structure as well as the exact pattern of the mine both also determine the outcome. I end the talk by describing a highly simplified model of search games with incomplete information for which the leafminer-parasitoid interaction was a motivating example. A healthy dose of randomness in the chosen paths is beneficial both for the prey and the predator. Further progress in modelling realistic search games between predator and prey requires (i) joint information about both trajectories, so far seldom recorded together, and (ii) a theoretical development of combined pursuit-evasion and search games models, two kinds of models which so far live their own lives without interaction. However, most observed predator-prey close range interactions contain elements of both.