Safety in numbers: Sophisticated vigilance by Allenby’s gerbil

Since 1963, nonlinear predation theory has predicted that, at low population densities, victim species may well be mutualistic rather than competitive. Theory identifies this mutualism as a principal source of dynamic instability in the interaction. Using gerbils and trained barn owls, we conducted the first (to our knowledge) field tests of the theory’s prediction of mutualism. The behavior of the gerbils confirms its existence.