Spatial Patchiness, Individual Performance and Predator Impacts

Patchiness in abundance is common but estimates of its importance in nature are rare. We show that increases in patchiness in a natural population of predatory zooplankton can result in: (1) reductions in the predation rates of most predators; (2) substantial changes in the impact of a predator on its prey; and (3) large differences between the per capita impact of the predator population and the predation rates of most individual predators. Our approach can be readily applied to other ecological interactions and communities