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Different apex predators may share the same resources in a giving environment. The grey wolf and the brown bear are predators of ungulates in North America and Europe. The authors evaluated a long dataset to understand how the presence of bears affects the kill rate of wolves. Wolves increased the time between consecutive kills in bears’ presence in both sites. The authors suggest some mechanisms to explain this:

1. bears reduce densities of neonate ungulates (i.e. exploitative competition)
2. wolves delay by killing larger preys or feeding on usurped kills under bears' presence (i.e. interference competition + kleptoparasitism)

Think about the balance of exploitative and interfere nce competition between bears and wolves. What are the negative and positive effects of bears to wolves’ kills? How bears can enhance the feeding of wolves? Think about considering the handling time differences in the absence and presence of bears.

The authors suggest that the presence of both predators possibly impact prey less than the sum of their individual impacts. Include prey’s population dynamic on the model considering the effect of the predators in sympatry and allopatry.

Competition between apex predators? Brown bears decrease wolf kill rate on two continents. Tallian et al. 2017. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 284: 20162368.http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/royprsb/284/1848/20162368.full.pdf