Skip Navigation


Behavioral Ecology Advance Access originally published online on September 1, 2006
Behavioral Ecology 2006 17(6):959-964; doi:10.1093/beheco/arl037
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow Lay Summary
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
17/6/959    most recent
arl037v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Search for citing articles in:
ISI Web of Science (2)
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Webster, M. M.
Right arrow Articles by Hart, P. J.B.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow Articles by Webster, M. M.
Right arrow Articles by Hart, P. J.B.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Kleptoparasitic prey competition in shoaling fish: effects of familiarity and prey distribution

Michael M. Webster and Paul J.B. Hart

Department of Biology, University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK

Address correspondence to M.M. Webster. E-mail: mmw5{at}le.ac.uk.

Familiarity is thought to stabilize dominance hierarchies and reduce aggressive interactions within groups of socially living animals. Though familiarity has been widely studied in shoaling fish, few studies have investigated changes in prey competition as a function of time spent together within groups of initially unfamiliar individuals. In this study, we created shoals of three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) and monitored changes in foraging rates and related competitive behaviors within shoals over a 4-week period in experimental series where prey was spatially and temporally concentrated or dispersed. Prey share was unequal under both prey distribution modes, and disparity in prey share was not seen to change as trials progressed. Interestingly, the contest rate for prey items fell over time when individuals were competing for dispersed prey but not when prey were concentrated. We found no evidence that fish showed association preferences for either group members that had consumed a greater or lesser proportion of prey during trials. Though the intensity of competition may be reduced by increased group stability in nature, this is likely to be strongly dependent on the way prey resources are distributed through space and time.

Key words: flock, foraging, scrounging behavior, shoal, threespine stickleback.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.