Risk-induced neophobia: does sensory modality matter?

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• 作者：Grant E. Brown ; Christopher D. Jackson ; Brendan J. Joyce…
• 关键词：Phenotypic plasticity ; Induced neophobia ; Behavioural trade ; offs ; Convict cichlids ; Predator–prey interactions ; Sensory complementarity
• 刊名：Animal Cognition
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：November 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：19
• 期：6
• 页码：1143-1150
• 全文大小：593 KB
• 刊物类别：Biomedical and Life Sciences
• 刊物主题：Life Sciences
  Behavioural Sciences
  Zoology
  Human Physiology
  
• 出版者：Springer Berlin / Heidelberg
• ISSN：1435-9456
• 卷排序：19

文摘

Recent studies have documented that exposure to high levels of background risk can induce neophobic predator avoidance in prey animals, whereby they respond to any novel cue with an anti-predator response. Such phenotypically plastic predator avoidance may allow prey to maximize anti-predator benefits in variable risk environments. It remains poorly understood whether risk assessment information from different sensory modalities can be integrated to induce generalized, cross-sensory system neophobic responses. Here, we directly test this hypothesis by exposing juvenile convict cichlids (Amatitlania nigrofasciata) to high- versus low-risk environments using either conspecific alarm cue (chemosensory risk) or a model avian predator (visual/mechanical risk) and testing their response to a novel chemosensory cue (Experiment 1) or visual cue (Experiment 2). Our results suggest that regardless of the sensory modality used to increased perceived risk, cichlids pre-exposed to high-risk conditions exhibited increased predator avoidance in response to any novel visual or chemical cue. As expected, cichlids pre-exposed to low-risk conditions did not display any neophobic responses. Our results suggest that induced neophobia is not cue specific; rather, it may function as a generalized response to perceived predation risk.