Effects of danger cues on mating interactions are size dependent in freshwater crayfish

Greta Achenbach, Josephine Conlon, Divya Kumar, Madeleine Ruley, Brooke Struble and Lauren Mathews

Behavioral Ecology, 2025, vol. 36, issue 5, araf094.

Abstract: Nonconsumptive effects (NCEs) can have substantial effects on prey populations. For example, they may alter mating interactions or interfere with foraging behavior, with potential repercussions for the entire community. Crayfish, the dominant macroinvertebrates in many temperate freshwater ecosystems, are prey to many aquatic and terrestrial species and show behavioral responses to both predator and conspecific alarm cues. However, effects of danger cues on mating interactions have not been investigated. We exposed heterosexual pairs of Faxonius virilis to conspecific alarm cues in the mating season and compared their interactions with those of unexposed pairs. We found that almost all crayfish in both groups mated within the experimental period, but latency to begin mating varied with treatment and body size. Specifically, in the exposed group, small pairs showed increased latency to begin mating relative to larger pairs, whereas crayfish in the unexposed group showed the opposite pattern. Thus, crayfish responses to danger cues may be a function of their perceived risk based on body size, as smaller crayfish are likely to be more vulnerable to predators. We propose that, under natural conditions including the presence of mate competition, an increased latency to begin mating is likely to result in decreased mating success for smaller crayfish in the presence of danger cues. Such behavioral NCEs may result in differential selection on body size in environments with different predator pressures with consequent effects on crayfish populations and aquatic communities.

Keywords: alarm cues; behavioral plasticity; crayfish; nonconsumptive effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/araf094 (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:36:y:2025:i:5:p:araf094.

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 ().