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Risk of predation makes foragers less choosy about their food

Animals foraging in the wild have to balance speed of decision making and accuracy of assessment of a food item’s quality. If resource quality is important for maximizing fitness, then the duration of decision making may be in conflict with other crucial and time consuming tasks, such as anti-predat...

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Autores principales: Charalabidis, Alice, Dechaume-Moncharmont, François-Xavier, Petit, Sandrine, Bohan, David A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5679636/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29121652
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0187167
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author Charalabidis, Alice
Dechaume-Moncharmont, François-Xavier
Petit, Sandrine
Bohan, David A.
author_facet Charalabidis, Alice
Dechaume-Moncharmont, François-Xavier
Petit, Sandrine
Bohan, David A.
author_sort Charalabidis, Alice
collection PubMed
description Animals foraging in the wild have to balance speed of decision making and accuracy of assessment of a food item’s quality. If resource quality is important for maximizing fitness, then the duration of decision making may be in conflict with other crucial and time consuming tasks, such as anti-predator behaviours or competition monitoring. Individuals facing the risk of predation and/or competition should adjust the duration of decision making and, as a consequence, their level of choosiness for resources. When exposed to predation, the forager could either maintain its level of choosiness for food items but accept a reduction in the amount of food items consumed or it could reduce its level of choosiness and accept all prey items encountered. Under competition risk, individuals are expected to reduce their level of choosiness as slow decision making exposes individuals to a higher risk of opportunity costs. To test these predictions, the level of choosiness of a seed-eating carabid beetle, Harpalus affinis, was examined under 4 different experimental conditions of risk: i) predation risk; ii) intraspecific competition; iii) interspecific competition; and, iv) control. All the risks were simulated using chemical cues from individual conspecifics or beetles of different species that are predatory or granivorous. Our results show that when foraging under the risk of predation, H. affinis individuals significantly reduce their level of choosiness for seeds. Reductions in level of choosiness for food items might serve as a sensible strategy to reduce both the total duration of a foraging task and the cognitive load of the food quality assessment. No significant differences were observed when individuals were exposed to competition cues. Competition, (i.e opportunity cost) may not be perceived as risk high enough to induce changes in the level of choosiness. Our results suggest that considering the amount of items consumed, alone, would be a misleading metric when assessing individual response to a risk of predation. Foraging studies should therefore also take in account the decision making process.
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spelling pubmed-56796362017-11-18 Risk of predation makes foragers less choosy about their food Charalabidis, Alice Dechaume-Moncharmont, François-Xavier Petit, Sandrine Bohan, David A. PLoS One Research Article Animals foraging in the wild have to balance speed of decision making and accuracy of assessment of a food item’s quality. If resource quality is important for maximizing fitness, then the duration of decision making may be in conflict with other crucial and time consuming tasks, such as anti-predator behaviours or competition monitoring. Individuals facing the risk of predation and/or competition should adjust the duration of decision making and, as a consequence, their level of choosiness for resources. When exposed to predation, the forager could either maintain its level of choosiness for food items but accept a reduction in the amount of food items consumed or it could reduce its level of choosiness and accept all prey items encountered. Under competition risk, individuals are expected to reduce their level of choosiness as slow decision making exposes individuals to a higher risk of opportunity costs. To test these predictions, the level of choosiness of a seed-eating carabid beetle, Harpalus affinis, was examined under 4 different experimental conditions of risk: i) predation risk; ii) intraspecific competition; iii) interspecific competition; and, iv) control. All the risks were simulated using chemical cues from individual conspecifics or beetles of different species that are predatory or granivorous. Our results show that when foraging under the risk of predation, H. affinis individuals significantly reduce their level of choosiness for seeds. Reductions in level of choosiness for food items might serve as a sensible strategy to reduce both the total duration of a foraging task and the cognitive load of the food quality assessment. No significant differences were observed when individuals were exposed to competition cues. Competition, (i.e opportunity cost) may not be perceived as risk high enough to induce changes in the level of choosiness. Our results suggest that considering the amount of items consumed, alone, would be a misleading metric when assessing individual response to a risk of predation. Foraging studies should therefore also take in account the decision making process. Public Library of Science 2017-11-09 /pmc/articles/PMC5679636/ /pubmed/29121652 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0187167 Text en © 2017 Charalabidis 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 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Charalabidis, Alice
Dechaume-Moncharmont, François-Xavier
Petit, Sandrine
Bohan, David A.
Risk of predation makes foragers less choosy about their food
title Risk of predation makes foragers less choosy about their food
title_full Risk of predation makes foragers less choosy about their food
title_fullStr Risk of predation makes foragers less choosy about their food
title_full_unstemmed Risk of predation makes foragers less choosy about their food
title_short Risk of predation makes foragers less choosy about their food
title_sort risk of predation makes foragers less choosy about their food
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5679636/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29121652
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0187167
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