Data from: Do snails treat the smell of foraging conspecifics as a safety cue?
Description
Prey responses to predation risk are highly variable. Plastic responses are often advantageous over more permanent changes when prey live in environments with fluctuating risk levels. Behavioral responses may be favored when predation risk is sudden since behaviors are immediate and easily reversed once predation risk has diminished. Safety cues – whose presence is informative about low risk levels – have been demonstrated to reduce anti-predator behavior in several taxa. This study sought to elucidate whether chemical cues from foraging conspecifics can decrease anti-predator behavior in the freshwater snail, Physa acuta. Experiment 1 tested the efficacy of the components of this proposed safety cue (i.e., cues released by algae, snails, and foraging snails) and tested snails at various ages. Experiment 2 involved relocating snails to clean water between predator cue and safety cue exposure to replicate flowing – rather than stagnant – water conditions and eliminate the spatial overlap of cues. Age affected behavior during both the predator cue and safety cue exposure periods in Experiment 1 and older snails were overall less likely to express anti-predator behavior. The presence of safety cues had no effect on snail behavior in either experiment, indicating that foraging conspecifics are not interpreted as a safety cue in this species. We suggest that ecological context must be carefully considered when identifying prey species in which to study safety cues. We believe species that regularly utilize conspecific social cues or eavesdrop on cues from co-occurring, non-predator heterospecifics are ideal candidates for this area of research.