Increased noise levels have different impacts on the anti-predator behaviour of two sympatric fish species.

types: Journal ArticleCopyright: © 2014 Voellmy et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Animals must avoid predation to survive and reproduce, and there is increasing evidence that man-made (anthropogenic) factors can influence predator-prey relationships. Anthropogenic noise has been shown to have a variety of effects on many species, but work investigating the impact on anti-predator behaviour is rare. In this laboratory study, we examined how additional noise (playback of field recordings of a ship passing through a harbour), compared with control conditions (playback of recordings from the same harbours without ship noise), affected responses to a visual predatory stimulus. We compared the anti-predator behaviour of two sympatric fish species, the three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) and the European minnow (Phoxinus phoxinus), which share similar feeding and predator ecologies, but differ in their body armour. Effects of additional-noise playbacks differed between species: sticklebacks responded significantly more quickly to the visual predatory stimulus during additional-noise playbacks than during control conditions, while minnows exhibited no significant change in their response latency. Our results suggest that elevated noise levels have the potential to affect anti-predator behaviour of different species in different ways. Future field-based experiments are needed to confirm whether this effect and the interspecific difference exist in relation to real-world noise sources, and to determine survival and population consequences.University of BristolBasler Stiftung für Biologische ForschungDefr

Should Attractive Males Sneak: The Trade-Off between Current and Future Offspring

Peer reviewe

Biofouling sponges as natural eDNA samplers for marine vertebrate biodiversity monitoring

Environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis has now become a core approach in marine biodiversity research, which typically involves the collection of water or sediment samples. Yet, recently, filter-feeding organisms have received much attention for their potential role as natural eDNA samplers. While the indiscriminate use of living organisms as 'sampling tools' might in some cases raise conservation concerns, there are instances in which highly abundant sessile organisms may become a nuisance as biofouling on artificial marine structures. Here we demonstrate how a sea sponge species that colonizes the moorings of the world's largest curtain of hydroacoustic receivers can become a powerful natural collector of fish biodiversity information. By sequencing eDNA extracted from Vazella pourtalesii retrieved from moorings during routine biofouling maintenance, we detected 23 species of marine fish and mammals, compared to 19 and 15 species revealed by surface and bottom water eDNA respectively, and 28 species captured by groundfish survey in the surrounding area, which are more ecologically impactful and involve higher additional costs. Sponge-based species inventories proved at least as informative as those obtained by traditional survey methods, and are also able to detect seasonal differences in fish assemblages. We conclude that opportunistic sampling of marine sponge biofouling may become an efficient way to document and monitor biodiversity in our rapidly changing oceans