The effects of familiarity on escape responses in the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata)
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Animal Behavior, Aquaculture, Fisheries and Fish Science, Developmental Biology
- Keywords
- predator evasion, social behaviour, escape response, antipredator benefits, familiarity, Predator evasion
- Copyright
- © 2017 Wolcott 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
- 2017. The effects of familiarity on escape responses in the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata) PeerJ Preprints 5:e2937v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2937v1
Abstract
Predation is the main driver of mortality during early life stages. The ability to avoid and evade potential threats is, therefore, favoured to evolve during the early stages of life. It is also during these early stages that the process of familiarization occurs. It has long been recognized that associating with familiar individuals confers anti predator benefits. Less, however, is known about how predator evasion is affected by social experience during early stages. In this study we test the hypothesis that familiarization acquired during early life stages improves anti predator escape responses. Using the Trinidadian guppy we examine the effect of different early social conditions in the three main components of predator evasion. Using high-speed motion analysis we compared the responsiveness, reactive distance and magnitude of the response (maximum speed, maximum acceleration and distance) of the response to a visual stimulus in groups composed either of familiar or non-familiar individuals. Surprisingly, groups composed by familiar individuals were less responsive than groups of unfamiliar individuals. It is plausible that familiarity equips individuals with better skills to accurately assess the threat avoiding false alarms. Reactive distance and magnitude of response were more dependent on individual size than on familiarity. Larger individuals reached higher maximum speeds and total distances in their escape response. Our approach allowed us to tease apart which aspects of an escape response are more likely to be influenced by early social conditions.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
Supplemental Information
S1
Supporting Information - Model selection for the variation in the frequency of mating behaviour using values of ΔAIC and Akaike weights. k: Number of parameters of the model. The estimated best fitting model is shaded in grey.
Raw DaTa
Raw data used to estimate the effect of familiarity on escape responses