Habitat complexity and predator odours impact on the stress response and antipredation behaviour in coral reef fish.

ABSTRACT: Mass coral bleaching events coupled with local stressors have caused regional-scale loss of corals on reefs globally. Following the loss of corals, the structural complexity of these habitats is often reduced. By providing shelter, obscuring visual information, or physically impeding predators, habitat complexity can influence predation risk and the perception of risk by prey. Yet little is known on how habitat complexity and risk assessment interact to influence predator-prey interactions. To better understand how prey's perception of threats may shift in degraded ecosystems, we reared juvenile Pomacentrus chrysurus in environments of various habitat complexity levels and then exposed them to olfactory risk odours before simulating a predator strike. We found that the fast-start escape re

SUBMITTER: Fakan EP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10306203 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature