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Response of juvenile male and female guppies to acute predation cues

Félixe Dumaresq Synnott,Alix J. P. Brusseau,Adam L. Crane,Grant E. Brown

Published 2025 in Behaviour

ABSTRACT

Within aquatic ecosystems, chemosensory cues are widely used as publicly available risk assessment information, allowing prey to optimize behavioural decisions. In sexually dimorphic species, males and females often have different responses to local predation threats. According to the ‘distracted male’ hypothesis, reproductively active males should show a reduced response to risk cues compared to conspecific females due to the potentially high costs of lost courtship and mating opportunities among males. Recent evidence supports this hypothesis, showing that adult male guppies (Poecilia reticulata) show a reduced or absent response to chemosensory risk cues. Here, we further test the ‘distracted male’ hypothesis by testing non-reproductive male and female guppies, collected from the Lopinot River (high predation) or the Upper Aripo River (low predation). We found that juvenile male and female guppies exhibited similar response patterns. Consistent with our predictions, both juvenile male and female guppies collected from a high predation site exhibited a similar antipredator response (reduced number of lines crossed) when exposed to conspecific alarm cues or a novel odour (vs. water control). Those collected from a low predation site showed similar responses to conspecific alarm cues and no response to a novel odour or the water control. Combined, our results suggest that unlike adult guppies, non-reproductive male and female guppies make similar behavioural decisions in response to acute predation cues. As predicted by the ‘distracted male’ hypothesis, the previously reported absence of a response to chemosensory risk assessment cues among adult males may be due to a devaluation of risk assessment information in favour of continued mating.

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