The Braveheart amphipod: A review of responses of invasive Dikerogammarus villosus to predation signals
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Animal Behavior, Ecology, Zoology, Freshwater Biology
- Keywords
- predator consumptive and non-consumptive effects, prey-predator interaction, invasive species, anti-predator strategy, kairomones
- Copyright
- © 2018 Jermacz et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. The Braveheart amphipod: A review of responses of invasive Dikerogammarus villosus to predation signals. PeerJ Preprints 6:e26580v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.26580v1
Abstract
Predator pressure is a fundamental force driving changes at all levels of the community structure. It may protect native ecosystems from alien species. Therefore, resistance to diverse predators resulting from a universal anti-predator strategy seems crucial for invasion success. We present a comprehensive review of the responses of an invasive amphipod Dikerogammarus villosus to sympatric and allopatric predator signals. We summarize diverse aspects of the gammarid anti-predator strategy, including predator identification, morphological and behavioral adaptations, effectiveness of shelter use and resistance to indirect predator effects. The response of D. villosus is independent of predator species (including totally allopatric taxa), which assures the high flexibility of its predator recognition system. It has harder exoskeleton and better capability of utilizing shelters compared to other gammarids, resulting in relatively high resistance to predators. Therefore, it can use predator kairomones as indirect food signals (sharing the diet with the predator) and follow the predator scent. This resistance may allow D. villosus to reduce the costs of its physiological responses to predators and sustain growth in their presence. This might facilitate the invasion success by increasing its competitive advantage.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.