In response to acute predation threats, prey may sacrifice foraging opportunities in favour of increased predator avoidance. Under conditions of high or frequent predation risk, such tradeoffs may lead to reduced fitn...In response to acute predation threats, prey may sacrifice foraging opportunities in favour of increased predator avoidance. Under conditions of high or frequent predation risk, such tradeoffs may lead to reduced fitness. Here, we test the pre diction that prey reduce the costs associated with lost opportunities following acute predation threats by exhibiting shortterm compensatory foraging responses. Under seminatural conditions, we exposed female guppies Poecilia reticulate from high and low predation risk sites to one of three levels of acute predation threat （high, intermediate or low concentrations of conspecific alarm cues）. Our results confirm previous reports, demonstrating that guppies from a high predation site were consistently ＇bolder＇ （shorter escape latencies） and exhibited graded threatsensitive responses to different simulated threat levels while those from the low predation site were ＇shyer＇ and exhibited nongraded responses. Most importantly, we found that when guppies from low predation sites resumed foraging, they did so at rates significantly lower than baseline rates. However, guppies from high preda tion sites resumed foraging either at rates equal to baseline （in response to low or intemaediate risk stimuli） or significantly in creased relative to baseline rates （in response to high risk stimuli）. Together, these results highlight a complex compensatory be havioral mechanism that may allow prey to reduce the longterm costs associated with predator avoidance [Current Zoology 60 （3）： 323-332, 2014 ].展开更多
文摘In response to acute predation threats, prey may sacrifice foraging opportunities in favour of increased predator avoidance. Under conditions of high or frequent predation risk, such tradeoffs may lead to reduced fitness. Here, we test the pre diction that prey reduce the costs associated with lost opportunities following acute predation threats by exhibiting shortterm compensatory foraging responses. Under seminatural conditions, we exposed female guppies Poecilia reticulate from high and low predation risk sites to one of three levels of acute predation threat （high, intermediate or low concentrations of conspecific alarm cues）. Our results confirm previous reports, demonstrating that guppies from a high predation site were consistently ＇bolder＇ （shorter escape latencies） and exhibited graded threatsensitive responses to different simulated threat levels while those from the low predation site were ＇shyer＇ and exhibited nongraded responses. Most importantly, we found that when guppies from low predation sites resumed foraging, they did so at rates significantly lower than baseline rates. However, guppies from high preda tion sites resumed foraging either at rates equal to baseline （in response to low or intemaediate risk stimuli） or significantly in creased relative to baseline rates （in response to high risk stimuli）. Together, these results highlight a complex compensatory be havioral mechanism that may allow prey to reduce the longterm costs associated with predator avoidance [Current Zoology 60 （3）： 323-332, 2014 ].
