concept

Prey switching

A predator's habit of abandoning a prey type once it grows scarce and turning its attention to whatever is now more common and easier to find. When favoured prey declines, the hunter does not chase it to the last individual - that costs too much effort for too little return - but switches to an easier target. This is the mechanism behind the stabilising Type III functional response: rare prey is spared not out of mercy but out of arithmetic, and the selfish thrift of each hunter becomes the thing that keeps rare species from being hunted into oblivion.