The release of chemicals following herbivore grazing on primary producers may providefeeding cues to carnivorous predators, thereby promoting multitrophic interactions. Inparticular, chemicals released following grazing on phytoplankton by microzooplanktonherbivores have been shown to elicit a behavioural foraging response in carnivorouscopepods, which may use this chemical information as a mechanism to locate and remainwithin biologically productive patches of the ocean. In this paper, we use a 1D spatialreaction-diffusion model to simulate a tri-trophic planktonic system in the water column,where predation at the top trophic level (copepods) is affected by infochemicals releasedby the primary producers forming the bottom trophic level. The effect of theinfochemical-mediated predation is investigated by comparing the case where copepodsforage randomly to the case where copepods adjust their vertical position to follow thedistribution of grazing-induced chemicals. Results indicate that utilization ofinfochemicals for foraging provides fitness benefits to copepods and stabilizes the systemat high nutrient load, whilst also forming a possible mechanism for phytoplankton bloomformation. We also investigate how the copepod efficiency to respond to infochemicalsaffects the results, and show that small increases (2%) in the ability of copepods tosense infochemicals can promote their persistence in the system. Finally we argue thateffectively employing infochemicals for foraging can be an evolutionarily stable strategyfor copepods.

In addition to the concept of the evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS), developed specifically for considering intraspecific conflicts, concepts such as the Nash equilibrium from game theory and the attractor or sink from dynamical systems theory appear relevant to the problem of characterizing populations of stable composition. The three concepts mentioned are discussed for one simple standard population model. It is found that evolutionarily stable strategies of one type are necessarily Nash equilibrium strategies, although the converse is not true. The dynamical systems characterization is found to provide a model for populations susceptible to invasion by ‘co-operative' strategies, but capable of evolving back in average to the original equilibrium.

It is pointed out that the conditions given by Haigh (1975) for finding evolutionarily stable strategies corresponding to a given matrix are sufficient, but not always necessary. An example is given, and an amended version of the necessary and sufficient conditions is stated.