ABSTRACT
Predation and food availability are probably the most important biological factors controlling food web structure, and hence production, in marine ecosystems (Steele and Frost, 1977; Landry, 1978; Ohman, 1988). In an effort to understand and predict the structuring role of predation, marine ecologists have put much effort into the development of predation rate models over the last half-century. Grazing or predation in the plankton is not directly performed by populations but by individuals, and interactions between predator and prey are discrete events that occur at the smallest time and space scales in the sea. Therefore, a common conceptual scheme was provided by Holling’s predation cycle model (Holling, 1966). This model is currently recognized as the most realistic approach (Price, 1988), as it dissociates predatory events into component processes of search, encounter, attack, escape, pursuit, and capture, which occur at the lower end of the microscale (millimeters and seconds).
