Dissecting the smell of fear from conspecific and heterospecific prey: investigating the processes that induce anti-predator defenses

Abstract

Prey use chemical cues from predation events to obtain information about predation risk to alter their phenotypes. Though we know how many prey respond to predators, we still have a poor understanding of the processes and chemical cues involved during a predation event. We examined how gray treefrog tadpoles (Hyla versicolor) altered their behavior and morphology when raised with cues from different stages of predator attack, predators fed different amounts of prey, and predators consuming different combinations of treefrog tadpoles or snails (Helisoma trivolvis). We found that starved predators and predators fed snails induced no defensive responses whereas tadpoles exposed to a predator consuming gray treefrogs induced greater hiding, lower activity, and relatively deeper tails. We also found that the tadpoles did not respond to crushed, chewed, or digested conspecifics, but they did respond to consumed (i.e., chewed plus digested) conspecifics. When we increased the treefrog biomass consumed by predators, tadpoles frequently increased their defenses when only tadpoles were consumed and always increased their defenses when the total diet biomass was held constant via the inclusion of snails. When predators experienced temporal variation in diet composition, including cues from snails to cause additional digestive cues or chemical noise, there was no effect on tadpole phenotypes. Our results suggest that amphibian prey rely on cues from both chewing and digestion of conspecifics and that the presence of cues from digested heterospecifics play little or no role in adding chemical noise or increased digestive enzymes and by-products that could potentially interfere with induced defenses.