Weterings, Martijn J. A.Zaccaroni, Marcovan der Koore, NikkiZijlstra, Linda M....
107-114页查看更多>>摘要：Reactive movement responses of prey are affected by habitat characteristics, such as cover, which determine predation risk. Open habitats with low cover facilitate predator detection, movement and escape, while closed habitats reduce the ability to detect predators and hinder movement. We performed a field experiment using nonlethal predators to study the reactive movement responses of medium-sized prey in patches with different vegetation characteristics related to elevated predation risk. Ten GPS-collared, free-ranging European hares, Lepus europaeus, were repeatedly subjected to a leashed dog and two humans in an experimental cross-over design. Linear mixed models were used to assess the effect of the treatment and its interaction with vegetation parameters on the movement behaviour of the European hare. The reactive movement response was best explained by the model that included the interaction between elevated predation risk and vegetation structure. A strong immediate response was found in short vegetation up to 1 h after the treatment ended. The effect extended beyond the duration of the treatment and was synchronized with the resting and foraging period over the next 24 h. The distance covered between resting and foraging grounds was negatively affected, while use of less risky, low-quality vegetation during resting and foraging was favoured. Medium-sized prey species exhibit strong behavioural responses to the perceived predation risk, which we demonstrate here for the European hare. An elevated predation risk, for example by dogs, can trigger costly behavioural responses in these medium-sized prey species. (C) 2016 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Smith, Jennifer E.Estrada, Jillian R.Richards, Heather C.Dawes, Stephanie E....
115-115页Hall, April E.Clark, Timothy D.
117-126页查看更多>>摘要：Responding appropriately to predator threat is a critical survival skill for all organisms. Under-responding can result in death, while continually over-responding can waste precious energy reserves and compromise important life history attributes such as growth and reproduction. This trade-off becomes particularly pertinent in predator-rich environments such as coral reefs, yet almost nothing is known of the sublethal physiological responses that coral reef predators elicit in their prey. To address this knowledge gap, we designed equipment and protocols to measure the metabolic responses of a common coral reef fish (juvenile ambon damsel, Pomacentrus amboinensis) to chemosensory and visual stimuli of a common predator (adult yellow dottyback, Pseudochromis fuscus). Pomacentrus amboinensis did not exhibit a metabolic response to the chemosensory predator stimulus, yet there was a consistent and significant metabolic response to the visual stimulus that endured for at least 24 h if the predator remained visible. A complete lack of metabolic response of P. amboinensis to the visual stimulus of a nonpredatory wrasse, Halichoeres argus, revealed an impressive ability of juvenile P. amboinensis to rapidly discriminate between similar-sized predatory and nonpredatory fishes. These divergent metabolic responses of P. amboinensis were not explained by measureable differences in their swimming behaviour in the predator versus nonpredator treatments, yet prey that were exposed to repeat predation attempts (predatory strikes) had the strongest metabolic response to the predator. Our findings demonstrate the capacity of coral reef fishes to interpret predator cues and prioritize threats and actions. Moreover, this study is the first to demonstrate that high predator densities on coral reefs could result in repetitive short-term or even chronic long-term elevations in energy expenditure of prey communities. (C) 2016 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Polverino, GiovanniRuberto, TommasoStaaks, GeorgMehner, Thomas...
127-135页查看更多>>摘要：Animals adjust their behaviour over time and contexts to cope with ecological and environmental variation. However, the presence of consistent between-individual differences in behaviour (i.e. personality) suggests that individual behaviour may be less flexible than previously thought. Here, we tested whether the size of the experimental tank and the ontogenetic stage of individuals affect estimates of average and consistent individual variation in activity and risk-taking behaviours in the eastern mosquitofish, Gambusia holbrooki, a fish model widely utilized for behavioural research. We measured risk taking and activity in juvenile, subadult and adult mosquitofish in a standard open-field test, in which the size of test tank varied linearly. We found strong evidence that spatial constraints alter mosquitofish behaviour. In particular, we observed that average activity increased with tank size, while the willingness of fish to take risks was independent of tank size. Moreover, juvenile fish exhibited, on average, lower risk-taking behaviours than older individuals. We highlight that the use of differently sized tanks may result in unequal variation in the average behaviour between juvenile and older fish, with escaping abilities of juvenile fish being underestimated in small environments. Most interestingly, we observed that variation in tank size triggered changes in the individual rank order for both risk taking and activity in juvenile fish, thus altering their personality estimates. In contrast, adult fish maintained consistent individual rank orders across all tank sizes. This study supports the hypothesis that behavioural repeatability increases with age, suggesting that personality estimates on adult animals may be less vulnerable to variation in laboratory contexts than those on juvenile ones. (C) 2016 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Fresneau, NolwennMuller, Wendt
137-143页查看更多>>摘要：Begging behaviour is a crucial component of parenteoffspring communication. It is used by offspring to trigger the transfer of parental resources while at the same time allowing parents to access cryptic information about their offspring's need. But in a brood of more than one, offspring may gain indirect fitness benefits from responding to the need of its (related) siblings, not to withdraw all resources, especially if these are needier and would possibly contest more vigorously. Thus each offspring is thought to adjust its begging behaviour to its own intrinsic need as well as to its social environment, which is also shaped by the parents potentially having control over the distribution of resources. Here, we experimentally satiated the heaviest nestling within canary broods, Serinus canaria, in order to analyse: (1) whether nestlings honestly communicate their intrinsic hunger level; (2) whether nestlings adjust their begging behaviour to the need of their siblings; and (3) how parents respond to these begging strategies. Only female nestlings responded honestly, begging significantly less when satiated. Male nestlings, by contrast, did not alter their begging according to the level of satiation. Nestlings only weakly responded to the need of their siblings, and again only female nestlings did so. Thus female nestlings appear to be more sensitive to both intrinsic need and changes in their social environment, potentially owing to their lower competitiveness. Parents preferentially fed needier nestlings irrespective of the observed sex differences in begging strategies. They appear to control food distribution according to (cryptic) signals of need, which is important to take into account when studying the adaptive significance of any begging behaviour and strategy. (C) 2016 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Gingins, SimonBshary, Redouan
145-155页查看更多>>摘要：The ecological approach to cognition provides a clear prediction regarding cognitive performance: performance should be higher in contexts that are ecologically valid than in invalid contexts. Here, we tested this prediction by comparing juvenile and adult cleaner wrasse, Labroides dimidiatus, with juveniles and adults of five related labrid species. Only the former fully depend on interactions with a large variety of so-called 'client reef fish' for their diet, which involves feeding largely on ectoparasites rather than on preferred client mucus. Our results show that cleaners outperform the other species tested in two contexts that are tightly linked to cognitive challenges during cleaning interactions: the willingness to explore novel objects and the ability to feed against preference in order to increase energy intake. In contrast, all species performed similarly in a spatial discrimination task, which was chosen for its limited ecological relevance to any of the species tested. In conclusion, the cognitive abilities of cleaners seem to be tightly linked to the domain-specific challenges they face in nature. We found no support for the alternative hypothesis that selection for social competence in cleaning interactions leads to domain-general cognitive abilities that also enhance performance in unrelated contexts. (C) 2016 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Oberliessen, LinaHernandez-Lallement, JulenSchaeble, Sandravan Wingerden, Marijn...
157-166页查看更多>>摘要：Disadvantageous inequity aversion (IA) is a behavioural response to an inequitable outcome distribution yielding a smaller reward to oneself than to a conspecific, given comparable efforts to obtain the reward. This behavioural response aims to minimize unfair reward distributions. It has been proposed to be essential for the emergence of cooperation. Humans show choice patterns compatible with IA and, as recently suggested, cooperative nonhuman species such as primates, corvids and dogs also respond negatively to disadvantageous inequitable outcomes. Here, we asked whether rats are sensitive to such inequitable outcomes. In a double T-maze apparatus, actor rats could choose to enter one of two different compartments after which a conspecific (partner rat) entered the adjoining partner compartment. One side of the paired compartments was associated with an equitable reward distribution (identical amount for the actor and the partner) whereas entry into the other paired compartment led to an inequitable reward distribution (in which the partner received a larger reward). Both compartments yielded an identical reward for the actor. Using a within-subjects design, we compared the actor rats' choices in the social condition with a nonsocial baseline control condition in which a toy rat replaced the partner rat. Actor rats exhibited disadvantageous IA: they preferred equitable outcomes in the social, but not the toy condition. Moreover, there was large variability in IA between rats. This heterogeneity in social preference could be partly explained by a social-hierarchy-dependent sensitivity to IA, as dominant animals showed higher IA than subordinate animals. Our study provides evidence for social-hierarchy-dependent disadvantageous IA in social vertebrates. Our findings are consistent with the notion that a sense of fairness may have evolved long before humans emerged. IA may therefore be a basic organizational principle, shared by many social species, that shapes the intricate social dynamics of individuals interrelating in larger groups. (C) 2016 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Arenas, AndresRoces, Flavio
167-174页查看更多>>摘要：Plant selection in leaf-cutting ants is not solely based on innate or learned preferences by foragers, but also on their previous experience with plants that have harmful effects on their symbiotic fungus. Foragers learn to avoid plants harmful for the fungus, albeit harmless for themselves. Since harvested leaves are processed inside the nest, it is an open question whether gardeners and midden workers also participate in the process of plant selection, for instance by learning to reject leaves that proved to be unsuitable for the fungus. Besides occasional observations of fresh leaf fragments in the waste dump, nothing is known about how unsuitable plants already harvested are handled inside the nest. To investigate plant avoidance by gardeners and midden workers, we quantified the dynamics of leaf processing and disposal in laboratory subcolonies of Acromyrmex ambiguus during and after having offered them fungicide-treated leaves over 3 days. Control subcolonies received water-treated leaves. Both foraging and processing of fungicide-treated leaves dramatically decreased after 24 h, indicating that learned responses were involved. By this time, midden workers handled leaf fragments as waste and transported them to the waste chamber. On day 4, we asked whether foragers, gardeners and midden workers had learned to avoid plants in a species-specific way, by offering them a choice between untreated leaves of the previously treated plant and untreated leaves of an alternative plant at their worksites. They all rejected the plant previously experienced as harmful for the fungus, indicating that delayed avoidance inside the nest represents an additional step of quality control to preserve the garden from noxious plants that may have qualified as suitable for foragers. We discuss how plant material that is discarded as waste may provide a source of information about plant suitability inside the colony. (C) 2016 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Wright, Colin M.Keiser, Carl N.Pruitt, Jonathan N.
175-183页查看更多>>摘要：The ways in which animal societies respond to threat has enormous consequences for their success. In the present study, we investigated how group personality composition in social spiders (Stegodyphus dumicola) alters groups' average response towards predators and how their responses change with experience with important predators, Anoplolepis custodiens ants. We found that colonies composed of a mixture of 'bold' and 'shy' personality types exhibited twice as much defensive web-making behaviour as other colony compositions. Colony defensive behaviour was also more temporally stable following experience with predators for 'mixed' colonies than for either monotypic composition (all shy or all bold). Colonies composed of bold individuals were particularly erratic in their defensive behaviour over time. Thus, colony composition altered colony-level plasticity in response to experience with one of their most voracious predators. We additionally observed the behaviour of marked individuals within colonies to determine which individual traits were associated with task participation during encounters with predators. Individual morphology and boldness both predicted task participation at the individual level, with boldness being negatively associated with participation in the attack sequence, but positively associated with defensive silk making. Low body condition also proved to be important for predicting participation in any task. Lastly, despite a tight association between colony composition and colony defensive behaviour, we found no evidence that colony composition affected colony survival during ant attacks in situ. Instead, older and more established nests were positively associated with colony persistence during attacks. (C) 2016 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Mitchell, Matthew D.Chivers, Douglas P.Brown, Grant E.Ferrari, Maud C. O....
185-192页查看更多>>摘要：Prey show remarkable plasticity across a range of traits that allow them to adapt to changes in predation risk in their local environment. While we know much about behavioural, morphological, physiological and life-history responses, we know less about how background risk alters cognitive functioning related to risk assessment. Here, we exposed wood frog tadpoles, Lithobates sylvaticus, to high-or low-risk environments for 7 days. Following this, we exposed tadpoles to one of four treatments that either continued risk, ended risk, taught tadpoles to recognize a predator or provided a false predator learning control. Tadpoles were tested for responses to predator odour, alarm cues or water either 1 day or 11 days after conditioning ended. Comparisons between conditioning treatments and test odours allowed us to assess how background risk alters a range of cognitive functions relating to risk assessment. Tadpoles that experienced high background risk responded to alarm cues with a weaker response than low-risk tadpoles, as predicted by the risk allocation hypothesis. High-risk tadpoles also developed neophobic responses to novel odours, unlike low-risk tadpoles, but displayed similar responses to a learned predator as tadpoles from low risk. When tested again 11 days later, high-and low-risk tadpoles responded equally across all treatments with the exception of learned predator responses, where high-risk tadpoles still responded strongly to the predator odour, while low-risk tadpoles did not. Our results demonstrate that recent experience with risk induces short-term cognitive plasticity in a number of functions related to risk assessment. (C) 2016 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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