Figure 2.

(a) Capture probability versus the global measure of injury of the prey school and the number of attacks for different values of the injury growth constants a_I, a (see electronic supplementary material, equations S1 and S2 for details) assuming ΔI = 1. The dashed lines indicate p_min and p_max. (b) Group hunting model: number of prey captured per individual as a function of N scaled by the number of prey captured for a solitary predator (horizontal dotted line). The largest group sizes, which offer an advantage to solitary hunting, are typically observed for short times T ≤ 1 h and decrease for longer times (or small prey schools). (c) Theoretical prediction on number of fish captured per predator versus predator group size for varying hunting times T. Again, n_c is normalized by the number of prey captured by a solitary predator. Solid line shows the contour corresponding to the value of n_c = 1 (same as solitary hunter) and represents therefore the border of the region where group hunting is beneficial. Default model parameters in all panels if not varied or otherwise stated: τ_a = 2.6 s, τ_a = 20 s, a = 5 × 10⁻⁴, p_min = 0, p_max = 1, S₀ = 200.