Question

In a population of predator and prey it was seen that when the prey population was numerically high the predator population consumed more and more prey. This is because the predator population
A. Can digest any quantity of food
B. Responds functionally
C. Responds numerically
D. Is a voracious feeder

Answer 1

The biological interaction in which the one organism termed as predator kills and eats the other organism named as prey is called predation. Parasitism, micropredation, parasitoids are the common feeding behaviors of this predation family. They include the stalking manner towards the prey and also sometimes by ambush and pursuit predation.

Complete answer: A functional response in ecology is the intake rate of a consumer as a function of food density that means, the amount of food that is available in a given ecotope. The numerical response is associated with which the consumer reproduction rate is a function of food density. Holling’s type I, II, III are the classified functional responses.
Type I response- Type I functional response assumes a linear increase in intake rate with food density, either for all food densities or only for food densities up to a maximum, beyond which the intake rate is constant. Lotka Volterra predator-prey model is the most used functional type response.
Type II response- Type II functional response is characterized by a decelerating intake rate, which follows from the assumption that the consumer is limited by its capacity to process food. Processing of food and searching for food is the instance of this in which Holling’s disc equation is developed. This response is modeled by the rectangular hyperbola.
Type III response- Type III functional response is similar to type II in that at high levels of prey density, saturation occurs. The graphical relationship of the number of prey consumed and the density of the prey population at the low-density levels will increase more linearly with the function of prey consumed by predators.
Hence, the correct option is (B) Responds functionally

Note: Prey switching involves two or more prey species and one predator species. However, if the density of one of the prey species decreases, then the predator will start selecting the other, more common prey species with a higher frequency.