Key Laboratory of Adaptation and Evolution of Plateau Biota, Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xining 810008, China.
Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xining 810008, China,
Zoolog Sci. 2020 Dec;37(6):505-511. doi: 10.2108/zs200062.
Through population expansion and accidental or deliberate introduction, prey commonly encounter novel predators they had never seen before. Several studies have shown that animals can generalize their learned recognition of a familiar predator to novel ones according to predators' identical or similar features. This process in fish mainly depends on the visual and chemosensory cues they receive. However, there is a lack of understanding of the different effects of these two cues. Topmouth gudgeons () that had never seen turtles were captured and used as the subjects, and three freshwater turtles of different genera were used as predators. Before and after using one turtle for predator training treatment of topmouth gudgeons, fish responses to visual and chemosensory cues of each turtle were tested and recorded, and it was found that predator training promoted topmouth gudgeons' recognition of the risks represented by visual cues of all three turtles and by chemosensory cues of the turtle that were used in training. These results further verify the generalization of predator recognition in fish and indicate that visual cues have a more extensive effect on fish than chemosensory cues in identifying novel predators, especially predators that are distantly related to the familiar threats.
通过种群扩张和偶然或故意的引入，猎物通常会遇到它们以前从未见过的新捕食者。几项研究表明，动物可以根据捕食者相同或相似的特征，将其对熟悉捕食者的学习识别推广到新的捕食者身上。鱼类的这个过程主要依赖于它们所接收到的视觉和化学感觉线索。然而，人们对这两种线索的不同影响缺乏了解。从未见过海龟的匙吻鲟被捕获并用作实验对象，三种不同属的淡水龟被用作捕食者。在对匙吻鲟进行捕食者训练处理前后，测试和记录了鱼类对每只海龟的视觉和化学感觉线索的反应，结果发现捕食者训练促进了匙吻鲟对所有三只海龟的视觉线索和训练中使用的海龟的化学感觉线索所代表的风险的识别。这些结果进一步验证了鱼类对捕食者识别的泛化，并表明视觉线索在识别新的捕食者，尤其是与熟悉的威胁关系较远的捕食者方面，对鱼类的影响比化学感觉线索更广泛。
