The behavioural and evolutionary ecology of fear: risk assessment by fishes and amphibians

恐惧的行为和进化生态学：鱼类和两栖动物的风险评估

• 批准号: 227444-2009
• 负责人: Chivers, Douglas
• 金额: $ 2.11万
• 依托单位: University of Saskatchewan
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2012-01-01 至 2013-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=497620
• 关键词: behavioural; evolutionary; ecology; fear; risk

The success of an animal depends on its ability to do three basic things: to forage, to avoid being eaten and to successfully reproduce. Consequently, the question of how animals avoid predation is a central issue in biology. To avoid predators prey need to constantly assess their risk of predation, hence this is the major focus of my research program. As a first step, our work will address how prey animals learn to distinguish predators from non-predators. This is a crucial pre-requisite for being able to respond to predators and is essential to allow the prey to avoid costly responses to animals that are not a threat. The second major focus of our work centers on understanding how variation in predation risk through time will influence behavioural decisions of prey. Temporal variation in risk has far reaching implications for decisions about when and where animals will forage and reproduce, which mates they select and how much effort they devote to territory defence. This is a rapidly emerging field that has the potential to completely revolutionize our thinking in many sub-disciplines of behavioural ecology. Recognition of predation risk by fishes is often mediated by chemical 'alarm cues' released from specialized club cells in the skin when the fish is captured by a predator. We recently showed that these cells likely evolved in an immune context to minimize effects from damage to the skin, and that the alarm function of the cells evolved secondarily because selection favours prey responding to information indicating that a nearby individual was recently captured. We will continue this exciting work specifically testing whether fishes increase their alarm cell investment as a protective measure when exposed to UVB radiation. The final focus of the proposal will be to examine the effects of metals on the chemosensory recognition of predators by fishes, thereby directly linking the behavioural ecology of risk assessment with metal contamination. Understanding the potential harmful effects of metals on aquatic ecosystems is particularly important as the mining industry continues to expand in Canada. A major emphasis in this proposal is on the training of HQP; I will train 5 PhD students through the course of this grant cycle.

一个动物的成功取决于它做三件基本事情的能力：觅食、避免被吃掉和成功繁殖。因此，动物如何避免捕食的问题是生物学的中心问题。为了避免捕食者，猎物需要不断评估它们被捕食的风险，因此这是我研究计划的主要重点。作为第一步，我们的工作将解决被捕食动物如何学会区分捕食者和非捕食者。这是能够对捕食者做出反应的关键先决条件，也是让猎物避免对不构成威胁的动物做出代价高昂的反应的必要条件。我们工作的第二个重点是了解随着时间的推移，捕食风险的变化如何影响猎物的行为决定。风险的时间变化对动物决定何时何地觅食和繁殖、选择何种配偶以及为保卫领地付出多少努力有着深远的影响。这是一个迅速兴起的领域，有可能彻底改变我们对行为生态学许多分支学科的看法。当鱼被捕食者捕获时，鱼对捕食风险的识别通常是由皮肤上的特殊俱乐部细胞释放的化学“警报信号”介导的。我们最近发现，这些细胞可能是在免疫环境中进化的，以尽量减少皮肤损伤的影响，而细胞的报警功能进化是次要的，因为选择倾向于猎物对附近个体最近被捕获的信息做出反应。我们将继续这项令人兴奋的工作，专门测试当暴露于UVB辐射时，鱼类是否会增加报警细胞的投资作为保护措施。该提案的最后一个重点将是检查金属对鱼类对捕食者的化学感觉识别的影响，从而直接将风险评估的行为生态学与金属污染联系起来。随着加拿大采矿业的不断发展，了解金属对水生生态系统的潜在有害影响尤为重要。本建议的重点是HQP的培训；我将通过这个资助周期培养5名博士生。