What is predator swamping?

Answer 1

It basically involves the mass production of prey individuals in some years and few in others and involves the functional response of predators to prey density, a concept discovered by CS (Buzz) Holling in his disk experiments. It was later found the same equation applied to enzyme kinetics worked on by Michaelis & Menten (also Canadian scientists). The idea is that at a certain critical density of prey (or substrate) the ability of predators to consume (transform) additional prey is hampered.

The functional response consists of searching, finding and capturing and eating prey. The capture and eating phase is referred to as "Handling time". Naturally at high prey densities, the search phase is reduced to zero, however, handling time for each predator remains the same, so the question is, are there sufficient predators to eliminate enough prey so the search term becomes significantly greater than zero given the handling time for each prey (per predator) which is assumed to be fixed.

This relies on predator saturation at higher prey densities and can be described by a sigmoid curve when prey density is on the y axis and time is the x in a Cartesian coordinate system.

Examples of this include the production of massive number of seeds in some years and few in others, emerging sea turtles and aerial and terrestrial predators inability to prevent some from reaching the sea when they migrate en mass, and migrating salmon juveniles moving downstream to estuaries and the sea. Also this can be seen in the life cycle of some cicada species having either 13 or 17 year cycles, the non-prime numbers make it more difficult for predators to mount a numerical response.

Alternately satiating and starving predators eliminates the predator species

numerical response, that is, well fed predators produce more young which increases the impact predators will have on prey density, but the numerical response may require several generations to occur. Another factor is the developmental response of predators to prey density, that is, predators who are well fed will generally have larger stomachs and will have handled more prey, novice predators may require a longer time to handle each prey.

Answer 2

Predator swamping is a defense strategy used by prey animals to reduce their risk of predation. It involves aggregating in large groups, making it difficult for predators to focus on and capture individual prey. This safety in numbers approach reduces the success rate of predators, increasing the chances of survival for the prey population as a whole.