Threat-induced neural prioritization: a life history framework for energy allocation under chronic predator stress

Whereas acute stress responses support immediate escape from transient threats, persistent or repeated predation risk (hereafter referred to as chronic predation risk) requires organisms to continually reallocate limited energetic resources among competing physiological demands. Classical stress physiology emphasizes acute "fight-or-flight" responses that transiently mobilize glucose and lipids to skeletal muscle, whereas life‑history and allostatic‑load frameworks highlight long‑term trade-offs between survival, growth, and reproduction. Yet these perspectives rarely specify how energy is redistributed among tissues under persistent threat. Here, we synthesize life-history theory, stress physiology, evolutionary medicine, and recent experimental work in a predator-exposed Drosophila melanogaster model to propose Threat-Induced Neural Prioritization (TINP), a conceptual framework describing how persistent predation risk induces tissue-specific metabolic reorganization that preferentially allocates energetic resources to neural and glial tissues. This reprogramming supports energetically costly processes such as memory consolidation and decision‑making that enhance survival, but reduces investment in peripheral homeostasis and can shade into pathology under environmental mismatch. We outline testable predictions about tissue‑specific substrate use, developmental timing, and taxonomic generality of TINP, and argue that explicitly treating cognition as a life‑history trait clarifies how chronic ecological threats shape both metabolic organization and evolutionary trajectories.