Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2010. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Animal Behaviour 81 (2011): 585-594, doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2010.12.002.
Description:
Longfin squid (Loligo pealeii) were exposed to two predators, bluefish (Pomatomus
saltatrix) and summer flounder (Paralichthys dentatus), representing cruising and ambush
foraging tactics, respectively. During 35 trials, 86 predator–prey interactions were evaluated
between bluefish and squid, and in 29 trials, 92 interactions were assessed between flounder and
squid. With bluefish, squid predominantly used stay tactics (68.6%, 59/86) as initial responses.
The most common stay response was to drop to the bottom, while showing a disruptive body
pattern, and remain motionless. In 37.0% (34/92) of interactions with flounder, squid did not
detect predators camouflaging on the bottom and showed no reaction prior to being attacked.
Squid that did react, used flee tactics more often as initial responses (43.5%, 40/92), including
flight with or without inking. When all defence behaviours were considered concurrently, flight
was identified as the strongest predictor of squid survival during interactions with each predator.
Squid that used flight at any time during an attack sequence had high probabilities of survival
with bluefish (65%, 20/31) and flounder (51%, 18/35). The most important deimatic/protean
behaviour used by squid was inking. Inking caused bluefish to startle (deimatic) and abandon
attacks (probability of survival = 61%, 11/18) and caused flounder to misdirect (protean) attacks
towards ink plumes rather than towards squid (probability of survival = 56%, 14/25). These are
the first published laboratory experiments to evaluate the survival value of antipredator
behaviours in a cephalopod. Results demonstrate that squid vary their defence tactics in response
to different predators and that the effectiveness of antipredator behaviours is contingent upon the
behavioural characteristics of the predator encountered.
Description:
This study was funded by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Sea Grant
Program, the Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Institute, the University of Massachusetts and the
Five College Coastal and Marine Sciences Program. R. T. Hanlon acknowledges partial support
from ONR grant N000140610202 and the Sholley Foundation.
Keywords:
Antipredator defence
;
Cephalopod
;
Deimatic behaviour
;
Fish
;
Foraging tactic
;
Ink
;
Loligo pealeii
;
Prey
;
Protean behaviour
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Preprint
Format:
video/wmv
Format:
application/pdf
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