Evidence map›Paper›PMID 25270335›Full record

ArticleOecologia2014

The dilemma of foraging herbivores: dealing with food and fear.

Clare McArthur, Peter B Banks, Rudy Boonstra, Jennifer Sorensen Forbey

Open access · greenAbstract read
PubMed Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in Oecologia, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 42 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
42citing papers in PubMed
8.0field-weighted citation impact, top 2% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

42 citing papers in PubMed, 125 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Article
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  4. Large-scale surveys of woodrats (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
  5. Density-dependent resource partitioning of temperate large herbivore populations under rewilding.Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America · 2025
    Article
  6. Article
  7. Seasonal indices of nutrition and stress in a northern population of snowshoe hares.Journal of comparative physiology. B, Biochemical, systemic, and environmental physiology · 2025
    Article
  8. Article
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  12. Review
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.

Clare McArthurSchool of Biological Sciences, The University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW, 2006, Australia, clare.mcarthur@sydney.edu.au.
Peter B Banks
Rudy Boonstra
Jennifer Sorensen Forbey
University of Sydney · AUBoise State University · USUniversity of Toronto · CA

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

For foraging herbivores, both food quality and predation risk vary across the landscape. Animals should avoid low-quality food patches in favour of high-quality ones, and seek safe patches while avoiding risky ones. Herbivores often face the foraging dilemma, however, of choosing between high-quality food in risky places or low-quality food in safe places. Here, we explore how and why the interaction between food quality and predation risk affects foraging decisions of mammalian herbivores, focusing on browsers confronting plant toxins in a landscape of fear. We draw together themes of plant-herbivore and predator-prey interactions, and the roles of animal ecophysiology, behaviour and personality. The response of herbivores to the dual costs of food and fear depends on the interplay of physiology and behaviour. We discuss detoxification physiology in dealing with plant toxins, and stress physiology associated with perceived predation risk. We argue that behaviour is the interface enabling herbivores to stay or quit food patches in response to their physiological tolerance to these risks. We hypothesise that generalist and specialist herbivores perceive the relative costs of plant defence and predation risk differently and intra-specifically, individuals with different personalities and physiologies should do so too, creating individualised landscapes of food and fear. We explore the ecological significance and emergent impacts of these individual-based foraging outcomes on populations and communities, and offer predictions that can be clearly tested. In doing so, we provide an integrated platform advancing herbivore foraging theory with food quality and predation risk at its core.

Indexed as

FearHerbivoryAnimalsFood ChainModels, BiologicalVertebrates

Identifiers

PMID25270335
OpenAlexW2072348506

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.