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Aggression and Food Resource Competition between Sympatric Hermit Crab Species

The vertical zonation patterns of intertidal organisms have been topics of interest to marine ecologists for many years, with interspecific food competition being implicated as a contributing factor to intertidal community organization. In this study, we used behavioral bioassays to examine the pote...

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Autores principales: Tran, Mark V., O’Grady, Matthew, Colborn, Jeremiah, Van Ness, Kimberly, Hill, Richard W.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3954795/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24632897
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0091823
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author Tran, Mark V.
O’Grady, Matthew
Colborn, Jeremiah
Van Ness, Kimberly
Hill, Richard W.
author_facet Tran, Mark V.
O’Grady, Matthew
Colborn, Jeremiah
Van Ness, Kimberly
Hill, Richard W.
author_sort Tran, Mark V.
collection PubMed
description The vertical zonation patterns of intertidal organisms have been topics of interest to marine ecologists for many years, with interspecific food competition being implicated as a contributing factor to intertidal community organization. In this study, we used behavioral bioassays to examine the potential roles that interspecific aggression and food competition have on the structuring of intertidal hermit crab assemblages. We studied two ecologically similar, sympatric hermit crab species, Clibanarius digueti [1] and Paguristes perrieri [2], which occupy adjacent zones within the intertidal region of the Gulf of California. During the search phase of foraging, C. digueti showed higher frequencies of aggressive behaviors than P. perrieri. In competition assays, C. digueti gained increased access to food resources compared to P. perrieri. The results suggest that food competition may play an important role in structuring intertidal hermit crab assemblages, and that the zonation patterns of Gulf of California hermit crab species may be the result of geographical displacement by the dominant food competitor (C. digueti).
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spelling pubmed-39547952014-03-18 Aggression and Food Resource Competition between Sympatric Hermit Crab Species Tran, Mark V. O’Grady, Matthew Colborn, Jeremiah Van Ness, Kimberly Hill, Richard W. PLoS One Research Article The vertical zonation patterns of intertidal organisms have been topics of interest to marine ecologists for many years, with interspecific food competition being implicated as a contributing factor to intertidal community organization. In this study, we used behavioral bioassays to examine the potential roles that interspecific aggression and food competition have on the structuring of intertidal hermit crab assemblages. We studied two ecologically similar, sympatric hermit crab species, Clibanarius digueti [1] and Paguristes perrieri [2], which occupy adjacent zones within the intertidal region of the Gulf of California. During the search phase of foraging, C. digueti showed higher frequencies of aggressive behaviors than P. perrieri. In competition assays, C. digueti gained increased access to food resources compared to P. perrieri. The results suggest that food competition may play an important role in structuring intertidal hermit crab assemblages, and that the zonation patterns of Gulf of California hermit crab species may be the result of geographical displacement by the dominant food competitor (C. digueti). Public Library of Science 2014-03-14 /pmc/articles/PMC3954795/ /pubmed/24632897 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0091823 Text en © 2014 Tran et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Tran, Mark V.
O’Grady, Matthew
Colborn, Jeremiah
Van Ness, Kimberly
Hill, Richard W.
Aggression and Food Resource Competition between Sympatric Hermit Crab Species
title Aggression and Food Resource Competition between Sympatric Hermit Crab Species
title_full Aggression and Food Resource Competition between Sympatric Hermit Crab Species
title_fullStr Aggression and Food Resource Competition between Sympatric Hermit Crab Species
title_full_unstemmed Aggression and Food Resource Competition between Sympatric Hermit Crab Species
title_short Aggression and Food Resource Competition between Sympatric Hermit Crab Species
title_sort aggression and food resource competition between sympatric hermit crab species
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3954795/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24632897
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0091823
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