Peer J Consumption Data

These data were used for a study that will be reported on in a forthcoming Peer J article. The data files were updated on September 25, 2015.This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.The data file contains the results of predation experiments on oyster spat by mud crabs in the presence of chemical cues produced by blue crabs fed differing amounts of mud crabs and placed different distances away. The treatment variables and levels consist of: Distance (0.25m, 0.5m, 1m, 1.5m, or 2m); Diet (High [H], Low [L], or Control [C]); and, Time (24, 48 hours). Date of experiment also is included. The measurement variables consist of Total Number Eaten, and Proportion Eaten Outside Refuge

Acquisition of a research and teaching salt water flume at Priest Landing, GA.

Issued as final reportNational Science Foundation (U.S.

Impacts of Global Warming and Elevated CO2 on Sensory Behavior in Predator-Prey Interactions: A Review and Synthesis

Ecosystems are shaped by complex interactions between species and their environment. However, humans are rapidly changing the environment through increased carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, creating global warming and elevated CO2 levels that affect ecological communities through multiple processes. Understanding community responses to climate change requires examining the consequences of changing behavioral interactions between species, such as those affecting predator and prey. Understanding the underlying sensory process that govern these interactions and how they may be affected by climate change provides a predictive framework, but many studies examine behavioral outcomes only. This review summarizes the current knowledge of global warming and elevated CO2 impacts on predator-prey interactions with respect to the relevant aspects of sensory ecology, and we discuss the potential consequences of these effects. Our specific questions concern how climate change affects the ability of predators and prey to collect information and how this affects predator-prey interactions. We develop a framework for understanding how warming and elevated CO2 can alter behavioral interactions by examining how the processes (steps) of sensory cue (or signal) production, transmission and reception may change. This includes both direct effects on cue production and reception resulting from changes in organismal physiology, but also effects on cue transmission resulting from modulation of the physical environment via physical and biotic changes. We suggest that some modalities may be particularly prone to disruption, and that aquatic environments may suffer more serious disruptions as a result of elevated CO2 and warming that collectively affect all steps of the signaling process. Temperature by itself may primarily operate on aspects of cue generation and transmission, implying that sensory-mediated disruptions in terrestrial environments may be less severe. However, significant biases in the literature in terms of modalities (chemosensation), taxa (fish), and stressors (elevated CO2) examined currently prevents accurate generalizations. Significant issues such as multimodal compensation and altered transmission or other environmental effects remain largely unaddressed. Future studies should strive to fill these knowledge gaps in order to better understand and predict shifts in predator-prey interactions in a changing climate

The hydrodynamics of benthic predation

Issued as final reportNational Science Foundation (U.S.

The fluid dynamical context of chemosensory behavior

Volume: 198Start Page: 188End Page: 20

Effects of Odor Flux and Pulse Rate on Chemosensory Tracking in Turbulent Odor Plumes by the Blue Crab, Callinectes sapidus

Volume: 207Start Page: 44End Page: 5

Evolutionary and ecological significance of mechanosenor morphology: copepods as a model system

© Inter-Research 2005: www.int-res.comThe ability to sense fluid motion is strongly influenced by morphological properties of setae and by the way in which they are organized into an ensemble along the mechanosensory organ (i.e. the antennule). Setal length and orientation affect how setae encode basic properties such as velocity, frequency and direction, whereas the arraignment of setae mediate perception of more complicated properties, such as shear. Morphological and physiological data indicate that the design of setae and antennules bias an organism towards detecting particular types of disturbances, or for efficient operation in certain environments. These structure-function relationships provide potential insight into trophic status, predator detection abilities or distributions, and perhaps can explain the fantastic degree of variation in setal morphology. However, structure-function predictions remain largely unverified, because we generally lack complementary data on both the design and ecological roles of the mechanosensory system in a particular organism. Thus, an important challenge is to use a comparative approach to determine whether design principles of mechanosensory systems can explain organismal properties, and therefore provide insights into ecological interactions in the plankton