ORCID Profile
0000-0003-0842-533X
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In Research Link Australia (RLA), "Research Topics" refer to ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes. These topics are either sourced from ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes listed in researchers' related grants or generated by a large language model (LLM) based on their publications.
Ecology | Behavioural Ecology | Biological Mathematics | Animal Behaviour | Ethology and Sociobiology | Comparative Physiology | Environmental Science and Management | Population And Ecological Genetics | Physiology | Marine And Estuarine Ecology (Incl. Marine Ichthyology) | Life Histories (Incl. Population Ecology) | Sociobiology And Behavioural Ecology | Conservation And Biodiversity | Wildlife And Habitat Management
Expanding Knowledge in the Biological Sciences | Expanding Knowledge in the Mathematical Sciences | Control of pests and exotic species | Integrated (ecosystem) assessment and management | Integrated (ecosystem) assessment and management | Living resources (flora and fauna) | Control of pests and exotic species | Integrated (ecosystem) assessment and management |
Publisher: Brill
Date: 2010
DOI: 10.1163/000579509X12512871386137
Abstract: Animal behaviour is a composite of innate and learned components. During their lifetimes, animals typically gain experience and manifest learning, thereby augmenting or modifying genetically determined, innate behaviour patterns. Following a training period during which predatory fish (jade perch, Scortum barcoo) were allocated to treatments and given experience of either live prey (mosquitofish, Gambusia holbrooki), freshly killed prey, or cichlid pellets with equal nutritional value, we tested the response of the predators to the prey in an experimental arena. Across all treatments, there was no difference in the number of attacks made by the predators on the prey, however the predators with experience of live fish prey were significantly more successful in capturing prey than those without previous experience of live prey. These results suggest that, in this piscivorous predator, the recognition of prey has an innate component, but that hunting efficiency is increased through experience. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the release of hatchery-reared fish into the wild, the majority of which are predatory.
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 03-2021
Abstract: The emergent patterns of collective motion are thought to arise from application of in idual-level rules that govern how in iduals adjust their velocity as a function of the relative position and behaviours of their neighbours. Empirical studies have sought to determine such rules of interaction applied by ‘average’ in iduals by aggregating data from multiple in iduals across multiple trajectory sets. In reality, some in iduals within a group may interact differently from others, and such in idual differences can have an effect on overall group movement. However, comparisons of rules of interaction used by in iduals in different contexts have been largely qualitative. Here we introduce a set of randomization methods designed to determine statistical differences in the rules of interaction between in iduals. We apply these methods to a case study of leaders and followers in pairs of freely exploring eastern mosquitofish ( Gambusia holbrooki ). We find that each of the randomization methods is reliable in terms of: repeatability of p -values, consistency in identification of significant differences and similarity between distributions of randomization-based test statistics. We observe convergence of the distributions of randomization-based test statistics across repeat calculations, and resolution of any ambiguities regarding significant differences as the number of randomization iterations increases.
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 08-2022
DOI: 10.1101/2022.07.29.501955
Abstract: Detailed observational research on free-ranging species of marine megafauna is required to understand their behavioural ecology, including how groups respond to environmental and anthropogenic pressures. New technologies are opening up potential for research on these species in the wild, especially on group-based and collective behaviours. Reef manta rays ( Mobula alfredi ) are socially interactive elasmobranchs that form groups in coastal reef habitats. Collective behaviours are likely important to their fitness, but may be disturbed by humans. Using small, remotely-piloted drones, we performed aerial observations of manta ray groups in Raja Ampat, West Papua. We empirically quantified patterns of collective movement including relative spatial positions, alignment, speed and leadership positions of conspecifics. We found unique patterns of spatial positioning, alignment and leadership, including differences between sexes, and high levels of local attraction, which were suggestive of distinct collective behaviour states. We suggest that ‘rules of interaction’ in manta rays vary at the in idual level and can shift depending on local environmental and social conditions. Leader-follower behaviour likely has broad importance to cohesive movement and social behaviour in M. alfredi . We suggest that further studies on manta ray movement should consider utilising models of collective motion that capture group-level behavioural processes.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 05-03-2010
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 14-12-2009
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 08-10-2014
DOI: 10.1007/S00442-014-3110-8
Abstract: Predators attack and plants defend, so herbivores face the dilemma of how to eat enough without being eaten. But do differences in the personality of herbivores affect the foraging choices of in iduals? We explored the ecological impact of personality in a generalist herbivore, the brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula). After quantifying personality traits in wild in iduals brought temporarily into captivity, we tested how these traits altered foraging by in iduals when free-ranging in their natural habitat. To measure their responses to the dual costs of predation risk and plant toxin, we varied the toxin concentration of food in safe foraging patches against paired, non-toxic risky patches, and used a novel synthesis of a manipulative Giving-Up-Density (GUD) experiment and video behavioural analysis. At the population level, the cost of safe patches pivoted around that of risky patches depending on food toxin concentration. At the in idual level, boldness affected foraging at risky high-quality food patches (as behavioural differences between bold and shy), and at safe patches only when food toxin concentration was low (as differences in foraging outcome). Our results ecologically validate the personality trait of boldness, in brushtail possums. They also reveal, for the first time, a nuanced link between personality and the way in which in iduals balance the costs of food and fear. Importantly, they suggest that high plant defence effectively attenuates differences in foraging behaviour arising from variation in personality, but poorly defended plants in safe areas should be differentially subject to herbivory depending on the personality of the herbivore.
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 06-01-2014
Abstract: Animals make use a range of social information to inform their movement decisions. One common movement rule, found across many different species, is that the probability that an in idual moves to an area increases with the number of conspecifics there. However, in many cases, it remains unclear what social cues produce this and other similar movement rules. Here, we investigate what cues are used by damselfish ( Dascyllus aruanus ) when repeatedly crossing back and forth between two coral patches in an experimental arena. We find that an in idual's decision to move is best predicted by the recent movements of conspecifics either to or from that in idual's current habitat. Rather than actively seeking attachment to a larger group, in iduals are instead prioritizing highly local and dynamic information with very limited spatial and temporal ranges. By reanalysing data in which the same species crossed for the first time to a new coral patch, we show that the in iduals use static cues in this case. This suggests that these fish alter their information usage according to the structure and familiarity of their environment by using stable information when moving to a novel area and localized dynamic information when moving between familiar areas.
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 20-01-2021
DOI: 10.1101/2021.01.19.427357
Abstract: Antarctic krill swarms are one of the largest known animal aggregations. However, despite being the keystone species of the Southern Ocean, little is known about how swarms are formed and maintained, and we lack a detailed understanding of the local interactions between in iduals that provide the basis for these swarms. Here we analyzed the trajectories of captive, wild-caught krill in 3D to determine in idual level interaction rules and quantify patterns of information flow. Our results suggest krill operate a novel form of collective organization, with measures of information flow and in idual movement adjustments expressed most strongly in the vertical dimension, a finding not seen in other swarming species. In addition, local directional alignment with near neighbors, and strong regulation of both direction and speed relative to the positions of groupmates suggest social factors are vital to the formation and maintenance of swarms. This research represents a first step in understanding the fundamentally important swarming behavior of krill.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 07-03-2016
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 09-08-2015
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 21-09-2012
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 07-2017
DOI: 10.1098/RSOS.170043
Abstract: Collective motion describes the global properties of moving groups of animals and the self-organized, coordinated patterns of in idual behaviour that produce them. We examined the group-level patterns and local interactions between in iduals in wild, free-ranging shoals of three-spine sticklebacks, Gasterosteus aculeatus . Our data reveal that the highest frequencies of near-neighbour encounters occur at between one and two body lengths from a focal fish, with the peak frequency alongside a focal in idual. Fish also show the highest alignment with these laterally placed in iduals, and generally with animals in front of themselves. Furthermore, fish are more closely matched in size, speed and orientation to their near neighbours than to more distant neighbours, indicating local organization within groups. Among the group-level properties reported here, we find that polarization is strongly influenced by group speed, but also the variation in speed among in iduals and the nearest neighbour distances of group members. While we find no relationship between group order and group size, we do find that larger groups tend to have lower nearest neighbour distances, which in turn may be important in maintaining group order.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 14-08-2017
DOI: 10.1111/ETH.12645
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 08-2023
DOI: 10.1098/RSOS.230579
Abstract: Immunocompetence and reproduction are among the most important determinants of fitness. However, energetic and metabolic constraints create conflict between these two life-history traits. While many studies have explored the relationship between immune activity and reproductive fitness in birds and mammals inoculated with bacterial endotoxin, very few have focused on fish. Fish have been neglected in this area due, in part, to the claim that they are largely resistant to the immune effects of endotoxins. However, the present study suggests that they are susceptible to significant effects with respect to reproductive behaviour. Here, we examined the reproductive behaviour of male guppies following exposure to bacterial lipopolysaccharides (LPS) in comparison to that of male guppies in a control treatment. Additionally, we investigated the responses of females to these males. We show that although immune challenge does not suppress general activity in male guppies, it significantly reduces mating effort. While females showed no difference in general activity as a function of male treatments, they did exhibit reduced group cohesion in the presence of LPS-exposed males. We discuss this in the context of sickness behaviours, social avoidance of immune-challenged in iduals and the effects of mounting an immune response on reproductive behaviour.
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 05-02-2016
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 04-2015
DOI: 10.1098/RSOS.140355
Abstract: The exceptional reactivity of animal collectives to predatory attacks is thought to be owing to rapid, but local, transfer of information between group members. These groups turn together in unison and produce escape waves. However, it is not clear how escape waves are created from local interactions, nor is it understood how these patterns are shaped by natural selection. By startling schools of fish with a simulated attack in an experimental arena, we demonstrate that changes in the direction and speed by a small percentage of in iduals that detect the danger initiate an escape wave. This escape wave consists of a densely packed band of in iduals that causes other school members to change direction. In the majority of cases, this wave passes through the entire group. We use a simulation model to demonstrate that this mechanism can, through local interactions alone, produce arbitrarily large escape waves. In the model, when we set the group density to that seen in real fish schools, we find that the risk to the members at the edge of the group is roughly equal to the risk of those within the group. Our experiments and modelling results provide a plausible explanation for how escape waves propagate in nature without centralized control.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2021
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2022
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 04-2017
DOI: 10.1098/RSOS.161056
Abstract: While a rich variety of self-propelled particle models propose to explain the collective motion of fish and other animals, rigorous statistical comparison between models and data remains a challenge. Plausible models should be flexible enough to capture changes in the collective behaviour of animal groups at their different developmental stages and group sizes. Here, we analyse the statistical properties of schooling fish ( Pseudomugil signifer ) through a combination of experiments and simulations. We make novel use of a Boltzmann inversion method, usually applied in molecular dynamics, to identify the effective potential of the mean force of fish interactions. Specifically, we show that larger fish have a larger repulsion zone, but stronger attraction, resulting in greater alignment in their collective motion. We model the collective dynamics of schools using a self-propelled particle model, modified to include varying particle speed and a local repulsion rule. We demonstrate that the statistical properties of the fish schools are reproduced by our model, thereby capturing a number of features of the behaviour and development of schooling fish.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 23-01-2018
DOI: 10.1111/JZO.12534
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Date: 06-2013
DOI: 10.1086/670242
Abstract: Explaining how in idual behavior and social interactions give rise to group-level outcomes and affect issues such as leadership is fundamental to the understanding of collective behavior. Here we examined in idual and collective behavioral dynamics in groups of humbug damselfish both before and during a collective movement. During the predeparture phase, group activity increased until the collective movement occurred. Although such movements were precipitated by one in idual, the success or failure of any attempt to instigate a collective movement was not solely dependent on this initiator's behavior but on the behavior of the group as a whole. Specifically, groups were more active and less cohesive before a successful initiation attempt than before a failed attempt. In iduals who made the most attempts to initiate a collective movement during each trial were ultimately most likely to lead the collective movement. Leadership was not related to dominance but was consistent between trials. The probability of fish recruiting to a group movement initiative was an approximately linear function of the number of fish already recruited. Overall, these results are consistent with nonselective local mimetism, with the decision to leave based on a group's, rather than any particular in idual's, readiness to leave.
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 12-2011
Abstract: While studies of sexual selection focus primarily on female choice and male–male competition, males should also exert mate choice in order to maximize their reproductive success. We examined male mate choice in mosquitofish, Gambusia holbrooki , with respect to female size and female dominance. We found that the number of mating attempts made by a male was predicted by the dominance rank of females in a group, with dominant females attracting more mating attempts than subordinates. The number of mating attempts made by males was independent of the female size. The observed bias in the number of mating attempts towards dominant females may be driven either by straightforward male mate choice, since dominance and female fecundity are often closely related, or via the dominant females mediating male mating behaviour by restricting their access to subordinate females.
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 12-2018
DOI: 10.1098/RSOS.181132
Abstract: Despite the frequency with which mixed-species groups are observed in nature, studies of collective behaviour typically focus on single-species groups. Here, we quantify and compare the patterns of interactions between three fish species, threespine sticklebacks ( Gasterosteus aculeatus ), ninespine sticklebacks ( Pungitius pungitius ) and roach ( Rutilus rutilus ) in both single- and mixed-species shoals in the laboratory. Pilot data confirmed that the three species form both single- and mixed-species shoals in the wild. In our laboratory study, we found that single-species groups were more polarized than mixed-species groups, while single-species groups of threespine sticklebacks and roach were more cohesive than mixed shoals of these species. Furthermore, while there was no difference between the inter-in idual distances between threespine and ninespine sticklebacks within mixed-species groups, there was some evidence of segregation by species in mixed groups of threespine sticklebacks and roach. There were differences between treatments in mean pairwise transfer entropy, and in particular we identify species-differences in information use within the mixed-species groups, and, similarly, differences in responses to conspecifics and heterospecifics in mixed-species groups. We speculate that differences in the patterns of interactions between species in mixed-species groups may determine patterns of fission and fusion in such groups.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 02-12-2013
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 06-2016
DOI: 10.1098/RSOS.160316
Abstract: Local specialization can be advantageous for in iduals and may increase the resilience of the species to environmental change. However, there may be trade-offs between morphological responses and physiological performance and behaviour. Our aim was to test whether habitat-specific morphology of stickleback ( Gasterosteus aculeatus ) interacts with physiological performance and behaviour at different salinities. We rejected the hypothesis that deeper body shape of fish from habitats with high predation pressure led to decreases in locomotor performance. However, there was a trade-off between deeper body shape and muscle quality. Muscle of deeper-bodied fish produced less force than that of shallow-bodied saltmarsh fish. Nonetheless, saltmarsh fish had lower swimming performance, presumably because of lower muscle mass overall coupled with smaller caudal peduncles and larger heads. Saltmarsh fish performed better in saline water (20 ppt) relative to freshwater and relative to fish from freshwater habitats. However, exposure to salinity affected shoaling behaviour of fish from all habitats and shoals moved faster and closer together compared with freshwater. We show that habitat modification can alter phenotypes of native species, but local morphological specialization is associated with trade-offs that may reduce its benefits.
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 22-05-2019
Abstract: In the wild, prey species often live in the vicinity of predators, rendering the ability to assess risk on a moment-to-moment basis crucial to survival. Visual cues are important as they allow prey to assess predator species, size, proximity and behaviour. However, few studies have explicitly examined prey's ability to assess risk based on predator behaviour and orientation. Using mosquitofish, Gambusia holbrooki , and their predator, jade perch, Scortum barcoo , under controlled conditions, we provide some of the first fine-scale characterization of how prey adapt their behaviour according to their continuous assessment of risk based on both predator behaviour and angular distance to the predator's mouth. When these predators were inactive and posed less of an immediate threat, prey within the attack cone of the predator showed reductions in speed and acceleration characteristic of predator-inspection behaviour. However, when predators became active, prey swam faster with greater acceleration and were closer together within the attack cone of predators. Most importantly, this study provides evidence that prey do not adopt a uniform response to the presence of a predator. Instead, we demonstrate that prey are capable of rapidly and dynamically updating their assessment of risk and showing fine-scale adjustments to their behaviour.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 08-12-2013
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 02-06-2014
DOI: 10.1111/ETH.12262
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 31-01-2011
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 09-2017
DOI: 10.1098/RSOS.170312
Abstract: The coordinated and synchronized movement of animals in groups often referred to as collective motion emerges through the interactions between in idual animals within the group. Factors which affect these interactions have the potential to shape collective movement. One such factor is familiarity, or the tendency to bias behaviour towards in iduals as a result of social recognition. We examined the effect of familiarity on the expression of collective motion in small shoals of female guppies ( Poecilia reticulata ). Groups comprising familiar in iduals were more strongly polarized than groups of unfamiliar in iduals, particularly when in novel surroundings. The ability to form more strongly polarized shoals potentially promotes information transfer and enhances the anti-predator benefits of grouping.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 07-2023
Publisher: Brill
Date: 2017
DOI: 10.1163/1568539X-00003470
Abstract: Humbug damselfish, Dascyllus aruanus , are a common coral reef fish that form stable social groups with size-based social hierarchies. Here we caught whole wild groups of damselfish and tested whether social groups tended to be comprised of animals that are more similar to one another in terms of their behavioural type, than expected by chance. First we found that in iduals were repeatable in their level of activity and exploration, and that this was independent of both absolute size and within-group dominance rank, indicating that animals were behaviourally consistent. Secondly, despite the fact that in iduals were tested independently, the behaviour of members of the same groups was significantly more similar than expected under a null model, suggesting that in idual behaviour develops and is shaped by conformity to the behaviour of other group members. This is one of the first studies to demonstrate this group-level behavioural conformity in wild-caught groups.
Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Date: 07-11-2011
Abstract: Collective motion, where large numbers of in iduals move synchronously together, is achieved when in iduals adopt interaction rules that determine how they respond to their neighbors’ movements and positions. These rules determine how group-living animals move, make decisions, and transmit information between in iduals. Nonetheless, few studies have explicitly determined these interaction rules in moving groups, and very little is known about the interaction rules of fish. Here, we identify three key rules for the social interactions of mosquitofish ( Gambusia holbrooki ): ( i ) Attraction forces are important in maintaining group cohesion, while we find only weak evidence that fish align with their neighbor’s orientation ( ii ) repulsion is mediated principally by changes in speed ( iii ) although the positions and directions of all shoal members are highly correlated, in iduals only respond to their single nearest neighbor. The last two of these rules are different from the classical models of collective animal motion, raising new questions about how fish and other animals self-organize on the move.
Publisher: The Company of Biologists
Date: 03-2013
DOI: 10.1242/JEB.079756
Abstract: Aggressive behaviour is linked to fitness, but it is metabolically costly. Changes in metabolic demand during the reproductive cycle could constrain activity and thereby modulate behavioural phenotypes. We predicted that increased metabolic demands in late pregnancy would lead to reduced aggression and a lower metabolic cost of behaviour in the mosquitofish Gambusia holbrooki. Contrary to our prediction, females became more aggressive in late pregnancy, but metabolic scope (i.e. the metabolic energy available for activity and behaviour) decreased. Consequently, late-stage pregnant females spent significantly more of their available metabolic scope on aggressive behaviour. Hence, as pregnancy progressed, females showed increasingly risky behaviour by depleting metabolic resources available for activities other than fighting. We argue that the metabolic cost of behaviour, and possibly personality, is best expressed with reference to metabolic scope, rather than resting metabolic rates or concentrations of metabolites. This dependence on metabolic scope could render reproductive success sensitive to environmental changes.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 29-03-2019
DOI: 10.1111/JZO.12669
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 19-04-0019
Abstract: Animal groups are often composed of in iduals that vary according to behavioral, morphological, and internal state parameters. Understanding the importance of such in idual-level heterogeneity to the establishment and maintenance of coherent group responses is of fundamental interest in collective behavior. We examined the influence of hunger on the in idual and collective behavior of groups of shoaling fish, x-ray tetras (Pristella maxillaris). Fish were assigned to one of two nutritional states, satiated or hungry, and then allocated to 5 treatments that represented different ratios of satiated to hungry in iduals (8 hungry, 8 satiated, 4:4 hungry:satiated, 2:6 hungry:satiated, 6:2 hungry:satiated). Our data show that groups with a greater proportion of hungry fish swam faster and exhibited greater nearest neighbor distances. Within groups, however, there was no difference in the swimming speeds of hungry versus well-fed fish, suggesting that group members conform and adapt their swimming speed according to the overall composition of the group. We also found significant differences in mean group transfer entropy, suggesting stronger patterns of information flow in groups comprising all, or a majority of, hungry in iduals. In contrast, we did not observe differences in polarization, a measure of group alignment, within groups across treatments. Taken together these results demonstrate that the nutritional state of animals within social groups impacts both in idual and group behavior, and that members of heterogenous groups can adapt their behavior to facilitate coherent collective motion.
Publisher: Brill
Date: 2015
DOI: 10.1163/1568539X-00003298
Abstract: The question of how hunger affects locomotory behaviour, in particular how it affects the kinematics of movement and an animal’s interaction with the physical structures in its environment is of broad relevance in behavioural ecology. We experimentally manipulated the hunger levels of in idual mosquitofish ( Gambusia holbrooki ) and recorded their swimming behaviour in shoals of 4 fish. We found that hungry in iduals in shoals moved at greater speeds and had higher turning speeds than satiated in iduals in shoals, as well as a greater variance in speed and turning speeds. We also found that hungry in iduals explored more of the arena and used more of its internal space, away from the square arena’s walls and displayed less wall-following behaviour than satiated in iduals. A functional explanation for this change in swimming behaviour and interaction with environmental heterogeneity is discussed in the context of social foraging, as is the consequence of these results for models of search patterns and collective movement.
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 07-02-2013
Abstract: How different levels of biological organization interact to shape each other's function is a central question in biology. One particularly important topic in this context is how in iduals' variation in behaviour shapes group-level characteristics. We investigated how fish that express different locomotory behaviour in an asocial context move collectively when in groups. First, we established that in idual fish have characteristic, repeatable locomotion behaviours (i.e. median speeds, variance in speeds and median turning speeds) when tested on their own. When tested in groups of two, four or eight fish, we found in iduals partly maintained their asocial median speed and median turning speed preferences, while their variance in speed preference was lost. The strength of this in iduality decreased as group size increased, with in iduals conforming to the speed of the group, while also decreasing the variability in their own speed. Further, in iduals adopted movement characteristics that were dependent on what group size they were in. This study therefore shows the influence of social context on in idual behaviour. If the results found here can be generalized across species and contexts, then although in iduality is not entirely lost in groups, social conformity and group-size-dependent effects drive how in iduals will adjust their behaviour in groups.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 21-11-2022
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 08-2012
Abstract: Different species respond differently to environmental change so that species interactions cannot be predicted from single-species performance curves. We tested the hypothesis that interspecific difference in the capacity for thermal acclimation modulates predator–prey interactions. Acclimation of locomotor performance in a predator (Australian bass, Macquaria novemaculeata ) was qualitatively different to that of its prey (eastern mosquitofish, Gambusia holbrooki ). Warm (25°C) acclimated bass made more attacks than cold (15°C) acclimated fish regardless of acute test temperatures (10–30°C), and greater frequency of attacks was associated with increased prey capture success. However, the number of attacks declined at the highest test temperature (30°C). Interestingly, escape speeds of mosquitofish during predation trials were greater than burst speeds measured in a swimming arena, whereas attack speeds of bass were lower than burst speeds. As a result, escape speeds of mosquitofish were greater at warm temperatures (25°C and 30°C) than attack speeds of bass. The decline in the number of attacks and the increase in escape speed of prey means that predation pressure decreases at high temperatures. We show that differential thermal responses affect species interactions even at temperatures that are within thermal tolerance ranges. This thermal sensitivity of predator–prey interactions can be a mechanism by which global warming affects ecological communities.
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 08-2021
DOI: 10.1101/2021.07.30.454431
Abstract: To overcome the cost of competition resulting from foraging in a group, in iduals may balance their use of private (i.e., acquired from personal s ling) and social (i.e., acquired by watching other in iduals) information to adjust their foraging strategy accordingly. Reliability of private information about environmental characteristics, such as the spatial distribution of prey, is thus likely to affect in idual movement and social interactions during foraging. Our aim was to investigate how movement characteristics of foraging in iduals changed as they acquired reliable private information about the spatial occurrence of prey in a foraging context. We allowed guppies ( Poecilia reticulata ) to develop the reliability of their private knowledge about prey spatial occurrence by repeatedly testing shoals in a foraging task under three experimental distributions of prey: 1) aggregated prey forming three patches located in fixed locations, 2) scattered distribution of prey with random locations, or 3) no prey (used as control). We then applied tracking methods to obtain in idual time series of spatial coordinates from which we computed a suite of movement variables reflecting search effort, social proximity and locomotion characteristics during foraging, to examine changes occurring over repeated trials and to investigate which best explained foraging success. We show that foraging shoals became more efficient at finding and consuming food over the first three days by increasing their time spent active. Over time, in iduals foraging on either scattered or aggregated prey travelled greater distances, showed an increasing distance to their closest neighbour and became slightly more stochastic in their acceleration profile, compared to control in iduals. We found that behaviour changed as private information increased over time, with a clear behavioural shift occurring on the third testing day. Social proximity was the major predictor of foraging success in the absence of prior foraging information, while search effort became the most important predictors of foraging success as information increased. In conclusion, we show that in idual movement patterns changed as they acquired private information. Contrary to our predictions, the spatial distribution of prey did not affect any of the movement variables of interest. Our results emphasise the importance of information in shaping movement behaviour in animals.
Publisher: Brill
Date: 2013
DOI: 10.1163/1568539X-00003115
Abstract: The ability of animals to disperse towards their original home range following displacement has been demonstrated in a number of species. However, little is known about the homing ability of three-spine sticklebacks ( Gasterosteus aculeatus ), an important model species in behavioural ecology. In addition, few studies have examined the role of social facilitation in relation to homing behaviour in fishes. We examined homing behaviour of sticklebacks displaced over distances of between 80 m and 160 m in land-drains with directional water flow. Fish were translocated from their original capture site, tagged and then released either in groups or solitarily. We performed recapture transects either one or two days later. Data provided by recaptured sticklebacks show that the fish dispersed in the direction of their original capture site. Although fish translocated downstream typically moved further than those translocated upstream, both dispersed towards their original capture site. There was no difference between fish released solitarily or in groups in their homing ability and indeed there was little evidence that fish translocated in groups remained together following their release. The homing ability of the fish was demonstrated by the finding that up to 80% of fish returned to their home ranges within two days of release over a distance equivalent to approximately 5000 body lengths of these small fish.
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Start Date: 04-2009
End Date: 02-2015
Amount: $775,000.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 2013
End Date: 02-2016
Amount: $126,311.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 2019
End Date: 12-2022
Amount: $336,000.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 03-2016
End Date: 12-2019
Amount: $329,700.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 2016
End Date: 12-2018
Amount: $374,400.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 01-2013
End Date: 04-2016
Amount: $360,000.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 02-2008
End Date: 10-2008
Amount: $170,000.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded Activity