%0 Journal Article
%T Visual and Chemical Prey Cues as Complementary Predator Attractants in a Tropical Stream Fish Assemblage
%A Chris K. Elvidge
%A Grant E. Brown
%J International Journal of Zoology
%D 2012
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2012/510920
%X To date, little attention has been devoted to possible complementary effects of multiple forms of public information similar information on the foraging behaviour of predators. In order to examine how predators may incorporate multiple information sources, we conducted a series of predator attraction trials in the Lower Aripo River, Trinidad. Four combinations of visual (present or absent) and chemical cues (present or absent) from each of two prey species were presented. The occurrences of three locally abundant predatory species present within a 1£żm radius of cue introduction sites were recorded. The relative attractiveness of cue type to each predator was directly related to their primary foraging modes, with visual ambush predators demonstrating an attraction to visual cues, benthivores to chemical cues, and active social foragers demonstrating complementary responses to paired cues. Predator species-pair counts were greatest in response to cues from the more abundant prey species, indicating that individuals may adopt riskier foraging strategies when presented with more familiar prey cues. These differences in predator attraction patterns demonstrate complementary effects of multiple sensory cues on the short-term habitat use and foraging behaviour of predators under fully natural conditions. 1. Introduction The behavioural strategies adopted by participants in predator-prey interactions are often mediated by publicly available cues [1] conveying information with some degree of immediate contextual relevance to the receiver. Public, or non-species-specific, cues may convey qualitatively different information to and elicit quantitatively different behavioural responses from different receivers [2]. The relative importance of different types of public cues in predator-prey interactions may be mediated by interactions between receiver taxon and environmental constraints; for example, visual cues are typically limited by photoperiod [3]. In aquatic environments, visual and chemical cues have been identified as the primary sources of information eliciting short-term behavioural processes for both vertebrate (e.g., fishes, [4]) and invertebrate (e.g., crustaceans, [5, 6]) species. Although acoustic cues have been demonstrated to elicit behavioural responses in freshwater fish receivers under laboratory conditions [7], the reliability of acoustic information may be limited under conditions of relatively high background noise, as in lotic systems. Many groups of freshwater fishes produce chemical cues in the epidermis which are released into the water
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijz/2012/510920/