Behavioural measures determine survivorship within the hierarchy of whole‐organism phenotypic traits

Abstract

Mortality through predation is often selective, particularly at life‐history bottlenecks. While many studies have looked at the importance for survival of specific prey characteristics in isolation, few have looked at a broad array of attributes and how they relate to survival in a realistic context. Our study measures 18 morphological, performance and behavioural traits of a juvenile damselfish that have been hypothesized as important for prey survival, and examines how they relate to survival in the field immediately after settlement. These attributes included size, relative false eye‐spot size, fast‐start escape response kinematics, thigmotaxis, laterality, and space use and activity in the field. Using conditional inference trees, we identify the most important drivers out of a reduced suite of 13 characters. Fast‐start response latency, boldness, feeding rates and two measures of activity were found to significantly contribute to survival. Morphological variables and most laboratory measures of performance appeared to contribute little to survival. Results suggest selection works on a suite of characters associated with boldness. Bold and active fish are those that will be best able to learn using public information, but because of the relative naiveté of newly metamorphosed fishes, speed to react to a strike from an unknown predator is of critical importance. Findings substantiate the ecomorphological paradigm by suggesting that selection on behaviour modifies the correlations of morphological and performance variables with survival probabilities, since behaviour modifies performance capabilities by making them specific to context. A http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.13033/suppinfo is available for this article.

Escape responses of fish: a review of the diversity in motor control, kinematics and behaviour

“…In addition, escape latency can be modulated by perceived risk of predation, as it is reduced when prey anticipate a predator (via sight or smell) (Ramasamy et al, 2015). In terms of the contribution of escape latency to survival, individuals with the shortest escape latencies are known to have higher chances of survival (Katzir and Camhi, 1993;McCormick et al, 2018) Directionality and escape trajectories Directionality has been defined as the proportion of escape responses in which the head (or the C bend in C-starts) moves away from the stimulus (Blaxter et al, 1981;Domenici et al, 2011a). Thus, directionality can be calculated for a given treatment, such as exposure to a given temperature or oxygen level (Lefrançois et al, 2005;Preuss and Faber, 2003), although it could be also measured for a given population or a given individual.…”

“…Engagement in other activities (i.e. feeding) affects other escape traits, such as escape latency (Bohórquez-Herrera et al, 2013), an aspect of performance that is known to affect survival in the field (McCormick et al, 2018). The direction of the initial body bend (i.e.…”

Intersection of motor volumes predicts the outcome of ambush predation of larval zebrafish

“…We argue that this is due to the variability of dragonfly mask extension times ( Figure 5D) where the same fish response latency can produce a successful escape in the case of longer extension time and a failed escape in the case of the shorter extension time. However, for scenarios where the duration of predatory strikes are more consistent, changes in the latency of escapes would produce measurable changes in evasion success, as seen in other studies [23,5,25,58].…”

Enhanced fast-start performance and anti-predator behaviour in a coral reef fish in response to suspended sediment exposure

“…Reduced visual acuity can delay the detection of approaching predators, potentially altering predation rates (Meager et al 2006). While the early detection of predators is crucial, the ability to escape a predator attack is equally important for prey survival (McCormick et al 2018;Walker et al 2005). Most prey fish escape predatory attacks via fast starts, i.e., short, high-energy swimming bursts elicited by a sudden stimulus (Domenici and Blake 1997).…”