Gammarus pulex show a grouping response to conspecific injury cues but not to predator kairomones

Lynsey A. Smith and Mike M. Webster

Behavioral Ecology, 2015, vol. 26, issue 4, 1188-1195

Abstract: Many species gain protection from predators by forming groups, but there is also evidence that some predators are better able to detect or more likely to attack grouped prey. Given this, it might pay prey to be flexible in their group behavior, forming groups on detecting certain predators, but dispersing when detecting others. In the first of 2 experiments, we found that flounders (Platichthys flesus) were more likely to attack larger groups of gammarids (Gammarus pulex) than smaller ones, whereas sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus) showed no such bias. This gave us the opportunity to test the idea that prey might show predator-specific grouping responses. Accordingly, our second experiment compared the grouping behavior of gammarids exposed to kairomones from either of the 2 predators, to conspecific injury cues (a nonspecific predation cue), to combinations of predator kairomone plus conspecific injury cues and finally to 2 control treatments. We predicted, based on our first experiment, that the gammarids would disperse in response to flounder kairomones, and group more cohesively in response to stickleback kairomones and conspecific injury cues. In fact, only the treatments including conspecific injury cues elicited a grouping response in the gammarids, whereas predator kairomones alone had no effect whatsoever on group cohesion or dispersal. We discuss possible explanations for these findings and briefly consider other systems that might be better suited to exploring predator-specific antipredatory grouping behavior.

Date: 2015
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/arv071 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:beheco:v:26:y:2015:i:4:p:1188-1195.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Behavioral Ecology is currently edited by Louise Barrett

More articles in Behavioral Ecology from International Society for Behavioral Ecology Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().