The effects of background risk on behavioural lateralization in a coral reef fish

Behavioural lateralization – the preferential use of one side of the body or either of the bilateral organs or limbs – has been well documented in many species, in a number of contexts. While the benefits reported are numerous, existing latent variability in the degree of lateralization within and across populations, species and taxa indicates that existing costs may modulate its expression. Few studies have reported changes in the degree of lateralization at the individual level, in response to long-term changes in environmental conditions, but not in response to short-term changes in environmental conditions. Predation is highly variable both temporally and spatially and hence is a good candidate for testing lateralization effects based on short-term changes in environmental conditions. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the degree of behavioural lateralization changes following short-term exposure to different levels of risk. We tested whether wild-caught juvenile damselfish expos...