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Predator presence affects activity patterns but not food consumption or growth of juvenile corkwing wrasse (Symphodus melops)

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Abstract

Indirect effects of predators can manifest themselves as changes in prey behaviour and physiology. Given that digestion requires energy, it has been suggested that prey will choose to eat smaller meals under predation risk to reserve a larger portion of the aerobic metabolic scope they have available for energetically demanding tasks more critical than digestion, such as escape. To test this prediction, we quantified food consumption and growth of juvenile corkwing wrasses (Symphodus melops) over 11 days in the presence or absence of a predator (Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua). We then quantified behaviour and food consumption of the same wrasses in behavioural arenas with a predator. All food consumption was examined in the context of the aerobic scope that would have been available during the digestive period. Overall, there was no effect of predator exposure on food consumption or growth, yet predator-exposed wrasses were more consistent in their daily food consumption, lending some support to our prediction of prey bet-hedging on meal size under predation risk. The lack of a clear pattern may have resulted from a relatively low percentage of aerobic scope (~ 20–27%) being occupied by digestion, such that fish retained ample capacity for activities other than digestion. In the subsequent behavioural trials, predator-exposed wrasses were more active and spent more time near the cod than predator-naïve wrasses, suggesting the former had habituated to predation threat and were more risk-taking. Our results highlight the complex and often counter-intuitive effects that predator presence can have on prey populations beyond direct consumption.

Significance statement

Predators affect the behaviour of prey species by simply being present in the environment. Such intimidation by predators can change activity patterns of prey and be as important as direct predation for ecosystem dynamics. However, compared to behavioural changes, we know little about how predators indirectly affect prey physiology. We investigated if fish deliberately eat less food when a predator is present, in order to retain sufficient physiological capacity for avoiding a potential attack, on top of the energetically costly process of digesting. While our study confirms that predator encounters reduce prey activity, prey fish appeared to rapidly habituate to predator presence and we did not see reduced food consumption in predator-exposed fish; these were, however, more consistent than unexposed fish in their daily food consumption, suggesting that fish may still be mindful about protecting their aerobic capacity under predation risk.

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Data availability

The data and analysis script for this study are archived in the repository figshare and were made available to editors and reviewers upon initial submission: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13180616 (Norin et al. 2020).

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Acknowledgements

We thank Bengt Lundve and the Royson family for the fish collection, and the staff at the University of Gothenburg’s Kristineberg Marine Research Station for the technical assistance. We also thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their comments.

Funding

This work was funded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (JS: grant no. FOA14SLC027; JS, FJ, BSR, DGR, SAB, MA, TDC: grant no. FOA17SLC), the Swedish Research Council VR (MA: grant no. 637-2014-449), the Swedish Research Council Formas (JS: grant no. 2013-947), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (BSR, SAB), the Danish Council for Independent Research (TN: grant no. DFF-4181-00297), the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement (TN: grant no. 713683), the Carl Trygger Foundation (Carl Tryggers Stiftelse för Vetenskaplig Forskning; MA: grant no. 14:15), and the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship programme (TDC: grant no. FT180100154) funded by the Australian Government.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. DTU Aqua: National Institute of Aquatic Resources, Technical University of Denmark, Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark

    Tommy Norin

  2. Department of Aquatic Resources, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Drottningholm, Sweden

    Josefin Sundin

  3. Department of Neuroscience, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Josefin Sundin

  4. Department of Biology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

    Rachael Morgan, Anna H. Andreassen & Fredrik Jutfelt

  5. Department of Zoology/Functional Zoomorphology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Mirjam Amcoff

  6. Department of Biological Sciences, University of New Brunswick, Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada

    Ben Speers-Roesch

  7. Département de sciences biologiques, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada

    Sandra A. Binning

  8. Department of Biology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    Dominique G. Roche

  9. Institut de biologie, Université de Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

    Dominique G. Roche

  10. School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, Australia

    Timothy D. Clark

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  1. Tommy Norin
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Contributions

TN, TDC, and JS conceived and designed the study; all authors performed the experiments; TN, JS, TDC, RM, and AHA analysed the data; TN, JS, and TDC drafted the manuscript; all authors revised the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Tommy Norin.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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All experiments were conducted in accordance with licence Dnr103-2014 (held by FJ) from the Swedish Board of Agriculture. All applicable international, national, and/or institutional guidelines for the use of animals were followed.

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Communicated by J. Lindström

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Norin, T., Sundin, J., Morgan, R. et al. Predator presence affects activity patterns but not food consumption or growth of juvenile corkwing wrasse (Symphodus melops). Behav Ecol Sociobiol 75, 14 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-020-02947-5

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