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Foraging guppies can compensate for low-light conditions, but not via a sensory switch

Morrell, Lesley J.; Kimbell, Helen; Chapman, Ben; Dobbinson, Khia

Authors

Helen Kimbell

Ben Chapman

Khia Dobbinson



Abstract

Animals can adapt to changes in their environment through behavioural or developmental plasticity, but studies of these responses tend to focus on either short-term exposure of adults to the changed conditions, or long-term exposure of juveniles. Juvenile guppies Poecilia reticulata reared in low light environments have previously been shown to make a sensory switch to using olfactory, rather than visual, cues in foraging. It is not clear whether this compensatory sensory plasticity is limited to juveniles, or whether longer-term exposure allows adults to similarly adapt. We investigated how adult guppies that were exposed to light or dark environments for 2 and 4 weeks responded to visual, olfactory and a combination of both food cues, in both dark and light test environments. We found that after 2 weeks exposure, adult guppies were better able to locate a food cue in light test environments regardless of their exposure environment. After 4 weeks, however, guppies were more successful at locating the food cue in the environment they had been exposed to, suggesting that dark-exposed guppies adapted their behaviour in response to their environment. We found that foraging was most successful when both visual and olfactory cues were available and least successful in the presence of olfactory cues, suggesting that the mechanism behind the change in success for dark-exposed guppies was not due to increased reliance on, or sensory switch to olfactory cues.

Citation

Morrell, L. J., Kimbell, H., Chapman, B., & Dobbinson, K. (2019). Foraging guppies can compensate for low-light conditions, but not via a sensory switch. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 73(3), Article 32. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-019-2640-9

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jan 30, 2019
Online Publication Date Feb 13, 2019
Publication Date 2019-03
Deposit Date Feb 1, 2019
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology
Print ISSN 0340-5443
Publisher Springer Verlag
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 73
Issue 3
Article Number 32
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-019-2640-9
Keywords Sensor plasticity; Environmental change; Foraging behaviour; Compensatory plasticity; Learning
Public URL https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/1260474
Publisher URL https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00265-019-2640-9

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Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2019. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.





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