Herczeg Gábor, Hafenscher Viktória P, Balázs Gergely, Fišer Žiga, Kralj-Fišer Simona, Horváth Gergely
Behavioural Ecology Group Department of Systematic Zoology and Ecology Biological Institute Eötvös Loránd University Budapest Hungary.
Department of Biology Biotechnical Faculty University of Ljubljana Ljubljana Slovenia.
Ecol Evol. 2020 May 5;10(12):5323-5331. doi: 10.1002/ece3.6276. eCollection 2020 Jun.
Behavioral innovation is a key process for successful colonization of new habitat types. However, it is costly due to the necessary cognitive and neural demands and typically connected to ecological generalism. Therefore, loss of behavioral innovativeness is predicted following colonization of new, simple, and invariable environments. We tested this prediction by studying foraging innovativeness in the freshwater isopod . We sampled its populations along the route of colonizing a thermokarstic water-filled cave (simple, stable habitat with only bacterial mats as food) from surface habitats (variable environment, wide variety of food). The studied cave population separated from the surface populations at least 60,000 years ago. Animals were tested both with familiar and novel food types (cave food: bacterial mats; surface food: decaying leaves). Irrespective of food type, cave individuals were more likely to feed than surface individuals. Further, animals from all populations fed longer on leaves than on bacteria, even though leaves were novel for the cave animals. Our results support that cave did not lose the ability to use the ancestral (surface) food type after adapting to a simple, stable, and highly specialized habitat.
行为创新是成功定殖新栖息地类型的关键过程。然而，由于所需的认知和神经需求，它成本高昂，并且通常与生态泛化相关。因此，预计在定殖到新的、简单且不变的环境后，行为创新能力会丧失。我们通过研究淡水等足类动物的觅食创新能力来检验这一预测。我们沿着从地表栖息地（多变环境，食物种类繁多）定殖到热喀斯特充水洞穴（简单、稳定的栖息地，只有细菌垫作为食物）的路线对其种群进行采样。所研究的洞穴种群至少在6万年前就与地表种群分离了。我们用熟悉和新颖的食物类型对动物进行测试（洞穴食物：细菌垫；地表食物：腐烂的叶子）。无论食物类型如何，洞穴个体比地表个体更有可能进食。此外，尽管叶子对洞穴动物来说是新颖的，但所有种群的动物在叶子上进食的时间都比在细菌上长。我们的结果支持，洞穴动物在适应了简单、稳定且高度专业化的栖息地后，并没有丧失使用祖先（地表）食物类型的能力。
