How to fail in advertising: The potential of marketing theory to predict the community-level selection of defended prey

Abstract

Economics and ecology both present us with a key challenge: scaling up from individual behaviour to community‐level effects. As a result, biologists have frequently utilized theories and frameworks from economics in their attempt to better understand animal behaviour. In the study of predator–prey interactions, we face a particularly difficult task—understanding how predator choices and strategies will impact the ecology and evolution not just of individual prey species, but whole communities. However, a similar challenge has been encountered, and largely solved, in Marketing, which has created frameworks that successfully predict human consumer behaviour at the community level. We argue that by applying these frameworks to non‐human consumers, we can leverage this predictive power to understand the behaviour of these key ecological actors in shaping the communities they act upon. We here use predator–prey interactions, as a case study, to demonstrate and discuss the potential of marketing and human‐consumer theory in helping us bridge the gap from laboratory experiments to complex community dynamics.

Evolution of multiple prey defences: From predator cognition to community ecology

“…The examples include the adoption of a cost–benefit approach in economic decision‐making to optimal foraging theory (Monteiro et al, 2013) and the use of trade and markets perspective on cooperation in biology (Hammerstein & Noë, 2016). Burdfield‐Steel and Burdfield (2023) introduce the potential application of marketing theories to predator–prey interactions – predators as consumers and prey as products – and its impact on prey community structure. Particularly, the authors consider the case of predator responses to aposematic prey.…”

“…The fitness landscape of a combination of nutrition and defence in prey parallels with quality‐ and price‐dependent positioning of products in marketing. The study of Burdfield‐Steel and Burdfield (2023) sheds light on the similarity between consumer and predator decision‐making and highlights a connection between a marketing principle and biological circumstances.…”