Many prey species rely on publicly available personal and social information regarding local predation threats to assess risks and make contextappropriate behavioral decisions.However,in sexually dimorphic species,mal...Many prey species rely on publicly available personal and social information regarding local predation threats to assess risks and make contextappropriate behavioral decisions.However,in sexually dimorphic species,males and females are expected to differ in the perceived costs and/orbenefts associated with predator avoidance decisions.Recent studies suggest that male Trinidadian guppies(Poecilia reticulata)show reducedor absent responses to acute personal information cues,placing them at greater risk of predation relative to females.Our goal here was totest the hypothesis that adult(reproductively active)male guppies rely on social information to limit potential costs associated with their lack ofresponse to risky personal cues.Adult male guppies were exposed to personal chemosensory cues(either conspecifc alarm cues(AC),a novelodor,or a water control)in the presence of a shoal of three females inside a holding container that allowed the transmission of visual but notchemical cues.At the same time,we exposed females to either risk from AC or no risk,resulting in the display of a range of female behavior,from calm to alarmed,available as social information for males.Alarmed females caused male fright activity to increase and male interest infemales to decrease,regardless of the personal cue treatment.These results indicate that male guppies rely more on female information regarding predation risk than their own personal information,probably to balance trade-offs between reproduction and predator avoidance.展开更多
基金supported by Concordia University and funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada(Discovery Grant to G.E.B.,and an E.W.R.SteacieMemorial Fellowship to M.C.O.F.).
文摘Many prey species rely on publicly available personal and social information regarding local predation threats to assess risks and make contextappropriate behavioral decisions.However,in sexually dimorphic species,males and females are expected to differ in the perceived costs and/orbenefts associated with predator avoidance decisions.Recent studies suggest that male Trinidadian guppies(Poecilia reticulata)show reducedor absent responses to acute personal information cues,placing them at greater risk of predation relative to females.Our goal here was totest the hypothesis that adult(reproductively active)male guppies rely on social information to limit potential costs associated with their lack ofresponse to risky personal cues.Adult male guppies were exposed to personal chemosensory cues(either conspecifc alarm cues(AC),a novelodor,or a water control)in the presence of a shoal of three females inside a holding container that allowed the transmission of visual but notchemical cues.At the same time,we exposed females to either risk from AC or no risk,resulting in the display of a range of female behavior,from calm to alarmed,available as social information for males.Alarmed females caused male fright activity to increase and male interest infemales to decrease,regardless of the personal cue treatment.These results indicate that male guppies rely more on female information regarding predation risk than their own personal information,probably to balance trade-offs between reproduction and predator avoidance.
