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Underwater caustics disrupt prey detection by a reef fish

Natural habitats contain dynamic elements, such as varying local illumination. Can such features mitigate the salience of organism movement? Dynamic illumination is particularly prevalent in coral reefs, where patterns known as ‘water caustics’ play chaotically in the shallows. In behavioural experi...

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Autores principales: Matchette, S. R., Cuthill, I. C., Cheney, K. L., Marshall, N. J., Scott-Samuel, N. E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7209061/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32228405
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.2453
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author Matchette, S. R.
Cuthill, I. C.
Cheney, K. L.
Marshall, N. J.
Scott-Samuel, N. E.
author_facet Matchette, S. R.
Cuthill, I. C.
Cheney, K. L.
Marshall, N. J.
Scott-Samuel, N. E.
author_sort Matchette, S. R.
collection PubMed
description Natural habitats contain dynamic elements, such as varying local illumination. Can such features mitigate the salience of organism movement? Dynamic illumination is particularly prevalent in coral reefs, where patterns known as ‘water caustics’ play chaotically in the shallows. In behavioural experiments with a wild-caught reef fish, the Picasso triggerfish (Rhinecanthus aculeatus), we demonstrate that the presence of dynamic water caustics negatively affects the detection of moving prey items, as measured by attack latency, relative to static water caustic controls. Manipulating two further features of water caustics (sharpness and scale) implies that the masking effect should be most effective in shallow water: scenes with fine scale and sharp water caustics induce the longest attack latencies. Due to the direct impact upon foraging efficiency, we expect the presence of dynamic water caustics to influence decisions about habitat choice and foraging by wild prey and predators.
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spelling pubmed-72090612020-05-12 Underwater caustics disrupt prey detection by a reef fish Matchette, S. R. Cuthill, I. C. Cheney, K. L. Marshall, N. J. Scott-Samuel, N. E. Proc Biol Sci Behaviour Natural habitats contain dynamic elements, such as varying local illumination. Can such features mitigate the salience of organism movement? Dynamic illumination is particularly prevalent in coral reefs, where patterns known as ‘water caustics’ play chaotically in the shallows. In behavioural experiments with a wild-caught reef fish, the Picasso triggerfish (Rhinecanthus aculeatus), we demonstrate that the presence of dynamic water caustics negatively affects the detection of moving prey items, as measured by attack latency, relative to static water caustic controls. Manipulating two further features of water caustics (sharpness and scale) implies that the masking effect should be most effective in shallow water: scenes with fine scale and sharp water caustics induce the longest attack latencies. Due to the direct impact upon foraging efficiency, we expect the presence of dynamic water caustics to influence decisions about habitat choice and foraging by wild prey and predators. The Royal Society 2020-04-08 2020-04-01 /pmc/articles/PMC7209061/ /pubmed/32228405 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.2453 Text en © 2020 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Behaviour
Matchette, S. R.
Cuthill, I. C.
Cheney, K. L.
Marshall, N. J.
Scott-Samuel, N. E.
Underwater caustics disrupt prey detection by a reef fish
title Underwater caustics disrupt prey detection by a reef fish
title_full Underwater caustics disrupt prey detection by a reef fish
title_fullStr Underwater caustics disrupt prey detection by a reef fish
title_full_unstemmed Underwater caustics disrupt prey detection by a reef fish
title_short Underwater caustics disrupt prey detection by a reef fish
title_sort underwater caustics disrupt prey detection by a reef fish
topic Behaviour
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7209061/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32228405
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.2453
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