While numerous studies have examined either initial prey responses to an approaching predator (flight initiation distance, FID), or subsequent hiding behavior (e.g. latency to resume activity), to our knowledge, no previous studies have repeatedly tested multiple individuals in nature, to quantify whether both FIDs and latencies to resume activity are repeatable, and whether these two stages of the antipredator response are positively correlated. This correlation is ecologically important in that opportunity costs of predator avoidance are particularly large if the same individuals tend to both escape more readily and hide longer. Here, we examined California ground squirrels’ (Otospermophilus beecheyi) responses to human approach, and provided the first example showing that, as predicted: FIDs, latencies to resume activity, and other aspects of prey responses post-FID were repeatable and positively correlated. Interestingly, we also found that across a gradient of human activity, squirrels in areas with higher human activity were generally bolder.

While a large body of research has focused on the physiological effects of multiple environmental stressors, behavioral effects remain far less studied. However, behavioural plasticity can not only directly drive responses to stressors but can also mediate physiological responses. Here, we provide a conceptual framework incorporating four fundamental tradeoffs explicitly linking animal behaviour to life history-based pathways for energy allocation, shaping the impact of multiple stressors on fitness. We first address how small-scale behavioural changes can drive conflicts between the effects of multiple stressors and alternative physiological responses. We then discuss how animal behaviour gives rise to three additional understudied and interrelated trade-offs: balancing the benefits and risks of obtaining the energy needed to cope with stressors, allocation of energy between life-history traits and stressor responses, and larger-scale escape from stressors in space or time via dispersal or dormancy. Finally, we outline how these trade-offs interactively affect fitness and qualitative ecological outcomes resulting from multiple stressors. Our framework suggests that animal behavior could underlie the extensive context dependence in results from stressor research, highlighting promising avenues for future empirical and theoretical research.

Enemy-risk effects, often referred to as non-consumptive effects (NCEs), are an important feature of predator-prey ecology, but their significance has had little impact on the conceptual underpinning or practice of biological control. We provide an overview of enemy-risk effects in predator-prey interactions, discuss ways in which risk effects may impact biocontrol programs, and suggest avenues for further integration of natural enemy ecology and integrated pest management. Enemy-risk effects can have important influences on different stages of biological control programs, including natural enemy selection, efficacy testing, and quantification of non-target impacts. Enemy-risk effects can also shape the interactions of biological control with other pest management practices. Biocontrol systems also provide community ecologists with some of the richest examples of behaviorally-mediated trophic cascades and demonstrations of how enemy-risk effects play out among species with no shared evolutionary history, important topics for invasion biology and conservation.  We conclude that the longstanding use of ecological theory by biocontrol practitioners should be expanded to incorporate enemy-risk effects, and that community ecologists will find many opportunities to study enemy risk effects in biocontrol settings.