in a variety of ways, as described below. Dilution effect A dilution effect is seen when animals living in a group "dilute" their risk of attack, each individual being just one of many in the group. George C. Williams and W.D. Hamilton proposed that group living evolved because it provides benefits to the individual rather than to the group as a whole, which becomes more conspicuous as it becomes larger. One common example is the shoaling of fish. Experiments provide direct evidence for the decrease in individual attack rate seen with group living, for example in Camargue horses in Southern France. The horse-fly often attacks these horses, sucking blood and carrying diseases. When the flies are most numerous, the horses gather in large groups, and individuals are indeed attacked less frequently. Water striders are insects that live on the surface of fresh water, and are attacked from beneath by predatory fish. Experiments varying the group size of the water striders showed that the attack rate per individual water strider decreases as group size increases. Selfish herd The selfish herd theory was proposed by W.D. Hamilton to explain why animals seek central positions in a group. The theory's central idea is to reduce the individual's domain of danger. A domain of danger is the area within the group in which the individual is more likely to be attacked by a predator. The center of the group has the lowest domain of danger, so animals are predicted to strive constantly to gain this position. Testing Hamilton's selfish herd effect, Alta De Vos and Justin O'Rainn (2010) studied brown fur seal predation from great white sharks. Using decoy seals, the researchers varied the distance between the decoys to produce different domains of danger. The seals with a greater domain of danger had an increased risk of shark attack. Predator satiation A radical strategy for avoiding predators which may otherwise kill a large majority of the emerging stage of a population is to emerge very rarely, at irregular intervals. Predators with a life-cycle of one or a few years are unable to reproduce rapidly enough in response to such an emergence. Predators may feast on the emerging population, but are unable to consume more than a fraction of the brief surfeit of prey. Periodical cicadas, which emerge at intervals of 13 or 17 years, are often used as an example of this predator satiation,