Fish Ecology and Conservation Physiology Laboratory, Department of Biology, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa K1S 5B6, Canada.
Cape Eleuthera Institute, PO Box EL-26029, Rock Sound, Eleuthera, The Bahamas; Perry Institute for Marine Science, Adelaide, The Bahamas.
Behav Processes. 2023 Aug;210:104914. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2023.104914. Epub 2023 Jul 7.
Queen conch (Aliger gigas) are large gastropod molluscs harvested for their meat, shells, and pearls and as they are generally easy to collect by hand, they are vulnerable to overfishing. In The Bahamas, fishers often clean (or "knock") their catch and dispose of the shells away from collection sites, forming midden heaps or "graveyards". Although queen conch are motile and found throughout shallow water habitats, live animals are rarely observed in the vicinity of middens, giving rise to a common belief that conch actively avoid graveyards, possibly by moving offshore. Here, we experimentally evaluated avoidance behaviours of queen conch to chemical (tissue homogenate) and visual (shells) cues indicative of harvesting activity using replicated aggregations of six size-selected small (< 14 cm shell length) and large (> 14 cm) conch at Eleuthera Island. Large conch were consistently more likely to move, and to move farther, than small conch, independent of treatment. Small conch, however, demonstrated greater occurrence of movement in response to chemical cues vs seawater controls, while conch of both sizes demonstrated equivocal responses to visual cues. Collectively, these observations suggest that more economically desirable large conch may be less vulnerable to capture during successive harvest events than smaller juveniles due to their greater propensity to move, and that chemical cues consistent with damage-released alarm cues may play a greater role in eliciting avoidance behaviour than the visual cues typically associated with queen conch graveyards. DATA AVAILABILITY: Data and R code are archived and freely available at Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/x8t7p/; DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/X8T7P).
皇后芋螺（Aliger gigas）是一种大型腹足纲软体动物，其肉、壳和珍珠均可被采集利用，而且由于它们通常很容易用手收集，因此容易过度捕捞。在巴哈马，渔民经常在远离收集点的地方清理（或“敲碎”）捕获物并丢弃贝壳，形成垃圾堆或“墓地”。尽管皇后芋螺是移动的，并且在浅水区栖息地中都有发现，但在墓地附近很少观察到活体动物，这导致了一种普遍的观点，即芋螺会主动避免墓地，可能会移到近海。在这里，我们使用经过大小选择的六个小（< 14 厘米壳长）和大（> 14 厘米）皇后芋螺的重复聚集物，在埃利塞拉岛（Eleuthera Island），用化学（组织匀浆）和视觉（贝壳）线索来评估芋螺对捕捞活动的回避行为，这些线索表明了皇后芋螺对化学（组织匀浆）和视觉（贝壳）线索的回避行为。大芋螺比小芋螺更有可能移动，而且移动的距离更远，而与处理无关。然而，小芋螺对化学线索的反应比海水对照更频繁地出现移动，而大小两种芋螺对视觉线索的反应则不确定。总的来说，这些观察结果表明，由于更具经济价值的大型芋螺移动的倾向更大，因此它们在连续的捕捞活动中可能比体型较小的幼体更不容易被捕捞到，而且与皇后芋螺墓地相关的视觉线索相比，与受损释放警报线索一致的化学线索可能在引发回避行为方面发挥更大的作用。
请注意，以上译文仅为示例，具体翻译结果可能会因个人理解和语境而有所不同。
