Title:
The Ecology of Yikes! Environmental Forces Alter Prey Perception of Predators

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dc.contributor.advisor Weissburg, Marc J.
dc.contributor.author Smee, Delbert Lee en_US
dc.contributor.committeeMember Dusenbery, David B.
dc.contributor.committeeMember Don Webster
dc.contributor.committeeMember Lin Jiang
dc.contributor.committeeMember Mark Hay
dc.contributor.department Biology en_US
dc.date.accessioned 2006-09-01T19:10:57Z
dc.date.available 2006-09-01T19:10:57Z
dc.date.issued 2006-05-17 en_US
dc.description.abstract Hard clams, Mercenaria mercenaria, are slow-moving organisms that are heavily preyed upon by both blue crabs and knobbed whelks in coastal Georgia. Hard clams are unable to escape from these predators, and when found, are commonly injured and/or consumed. Thus, their best survival strategy is to avoid their predators. In this study, we compared changes in clam behavior when exposed to blue crab and knobbed whelk predators. Clams reduced their feeding time when exposed to crabs and whelks, exudates from these predators, and to injured conspecifics. In a field experiment, we compared clam survival when caged predators where near clam beds vs. controls with empty cages. Clam survival was significantly higher when caged crabs or whelks were near, suggesting that clams detected these predators, reduced their feeding time, and were less apparent to ambient consumers. In lab behavioral assays, clams were less responsive to blue crabs in turbulent flows, and in the field, turbulence reduced the distance clams reacted to blue crabs. Previous studies have shown that blue crabs turbulence also diminishes blue crab foraging efficiency, and we conducted a field experiment to determine how turbulence affected clam-crab interactions. Our results suggest that predation intensity is greatest at intermediate turbulence levels, and lowest in flows with low and high turbulence levels. We attribute this pattern of predation intensity to differential effects of turbulence on the sensory abilities of crabs and clams. That is, in low turbulent flows, clams have a sensory advantage over crabs, and initiate avoidance behaviors before they are detected. However, as turbulence increases, clam perception diminishes faster than crabs, switching the sensory advantage to crabs, and making clams more vulnerable to consumers. In highly turbulent flows, crab perception declines at a rate faster than clams, and the sensory advantage returns to clams. en_US
dc.description.degree Ph.D. en_US
dc.format.extent 743129 bytes
dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/1853/11466
dc.language.iso en_US
dc.publisher Georgia Institute of Technology en_US
dc.subject Blue crab en_US
dc.subject Chemoreception
dc.subject Clam
dc.subject Flow
dc.subject Hydrodynamics
dc.subject Mercenaria
dc.subject Perceptual distance
dc.subject Predator-prey interaction
dc.subject Trait-mediated indirect interaction
dc.subject Turbulence
dc.subject Whelk
dc.subject.lcsh Predation (Biology) en_US
dc.subject.lcsh Turbulence en_US
dc.subject.lcsh Blue crab en_US
dc.subject.lcsh Buccinidae en_US
dc.subject.lcsh Chemical senses en_US
dc.subject.lcsh Northern quahog en_US
dc.title The Ecology of Yikes! Environmental Forces Alter Prey Perception of Predators en_US
dc.type Text
dc.type.genre Dissertation
dspace.entity.type Publication
local.contributor.advisor Weissburg, Marc J.
local.contributor.corporatename College of Sciences
local.contributor.corporatename School of Biological Sciences
relation.isAdvisorOfPublication 5e6121c4-22bc-405b-8b16-cde7c56afff6
relation.isOrgUnitOfPublication 85042be6-2d68-4e07-b384-e1f908fae48a
relation.isOrgUnitOfPublication c8b3bd08-9989-40d3-afe3-e0ad8d5c72b5
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