concept

Functional response

How fast a single predator eats as its prey grow more abundant. The ecologist C. S. Holling sorted it into three shapes: Type I rises in a straight line then stops abruptly (a filter-feeder like a tulkun); Type II rises then bends to a ceiling set by handling time (a busy solitary hunter like a thanator); and the S-shaped Type III - slow at low density, then steep, then flat - the shape that spares rare prey because the hunter ignores what is too scarce to be worth learning. Only the S-curve bends down near the origin, and that bend is a refuge that lets crashing prey recover.