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Hunger games: foraging behaviour and shelter use in fish under the context-dependent influence of parasitism

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Abstract

Diseases, and the parasitic organisms that cause them, can impact aspects of ecosystems ranging from altering food web connectivity to population dynamics. Apart from interspecific interactions, parasites can affect how their hosts behave with conspecifics, such as during competition for resources. Fish are important hosts to a variety of parasite taxa that can, through physical impairment or invasion of sense organs, affect how they interact with conspecifics for food, territory, or mates. In New Zealand, the common bully Gobiomorphus cotidianus plays host to a variety of parasites, encysting throughout the body (Apatemon sp.) or residing within the eyes (Tylodelphys darbyi). We hypothesized that fish with lower levels of infection would secure territories closer to a food patch and be more likely to tolerate sharing that territory. Our experiments show that parasites infecting different areas may have variable impacts on how far the host positions itself from a food patch and the likelihood that it shares its territory. Fish with higher intensities of T. darbyi tended to be closer to the food patch, but Apatemon sp. did not show a similar pattern. Higher infection levels of both parasites were statistically associated with bullies being less likely to share territory. Further, bigger fish were less likely to share their territory at higher intensities infection, and we observed individual variation in a fish’s response between trials. Our findings support that parasites matter in ecological interactions but also emphasize the context dependence of their effects.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the members of the Evolutionary and Ecological Parasitology Lab as well as Jolyn Chia for their assistance with field and lab work. We would also like to thank the University of Otago for supporting Brandon Ruehle via a PhD Scholarship.

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  1. Department of Zoology, University of Otago, 340 Great King Street, Dunedin, 9016, New Zealand

    Brandon Ruehle & Robert Poulin

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  1. Brandon Ruehle
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Correspondence to Brandon Ruehle.

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All applicable international, national, and/or institutional guidelines for the care and use of animals were followed. All procedures performed in studies involving animals were in accordance with the ethical standards of the University of Otago Animal Ethics Committee (No. 70/17001).

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Figure 6
figure 6

Relationship between Tylodelphys darbyi intensity and the mean distance from the food patch for each fish. Point size represents fish length and colour signifies fish tested together in a group

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Ruehle, B., Poulin, R. Hunger games: foraging behaviour and shelter use in fish under the context-dependent influence of parasitism. Parasitol Res 120, 3681–3692 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-021-07296-4

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