Revisiting the burglar-alarm hypothesis: a behavioral cascade mediated by dinoflagellate bioluminescence

Bioluminescence is widespread among marine organisms and has evolved independently multiple times. While its specific adaptive value is diverse, bioluminescence in most cases mediates fundamental interactions between individuals (predator, prey, mates) and thus impacts ecosystem processes. One hypothesized value of bioluminescence in dinoflagellates is through the ‘burglar alarm’: grazers of phytoplankton will make the ambient water ‘glow’ as they swim, thereby attracting visual predators of the grazer, thus indirectly protecting the dinoflagellates.
However, the most important grazers of dinoflagellates, copepods, are generally too small to elicit dinoflagellates to glow. Only individual cells captured by a copepod will flash, which in turn elicits a powerful escape response in the copepod. Here, we test a variant of this hypothesis that may work for copepods. The behavioral response of the grazer to the flashing of a captured dinoflagellate, rather than the flashing itself, attracts t..., , , # **Revisiting the burglar-alarm hypothesis: a behavioral cascade mediated by dinoflagellate bioluminescence**

## Description of the data and file structure

The excel file contains five sheets, with the variables in each sheet as below:

**1) Grazing exp.**

* Cell concentrations of dinoflagellates (at flashing and nonflashing phases) at the beginning and end of grazing experiments in the presence and absence of *Temora*
* Number of *Temora* in each replicate
* Clearance- and ingestions rates of *Temora* on dinoflagellates at flashing and nonflashing phases

**2) Jump behavior**

* Jump-related parameters (including jump frequency, jump duration, jump velocity, jump time proportion and jump distance) in *Temora* responding to dinoflagellates at flashing and nonflashing phases under three cell concentrations

**3) Predation exp.**

* *Temora* number in control groups in predation experiments
* Number and dry weight of *Temora* at the end of predation experiments
* Numbe...