The power of concentration: Antipredator responses to diluted frozen crayfish alarm cues provide insights on ecologically relevant concentrations and updates to methodology.

ABSTRACT: To optimize fitness when facing predation, animals perform threat-sensitive predator avoidance whereby they match the magnitude of the antipredator response to the severity of the perceived threat. Injury-released chemical alarm cues are a reliable indicator of predation risk in aquatic organisms, triggering overt antipredator responses upon detection by conspecifics. Animals with threat sensitivity typically have graded responses to increasing concentrations of these cues which plateau when a maximal response is reached, however, this is undocumented in crayfish. Furthermore, most research currently uses alarm cue exposures consisting of one crushed crayfish diluted in 100-400 mL of water, while it could be ecologically relevant for them to respond to lower concentrations, especially give

SUBMITTER: Achtymichuk GH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12755739 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature