Bearding the scorpion in his den: desert isopods take risks to validate their ‘landscape of fear’ assessment

Animals balance the risk of predation against other vital needs by adjusting their spatial behavior to match spatiotemporal variation in predation risk. To map this ‘landscape of fear’, prey use evolutionary rules of thumbs that are associated with the activity and hunting efficiency of predators. In addition, prey acquire perceptual information about the presence, identity, and state of potential predators and use these cues to focus their acute anti-predatory responses. Our goal was to explore if and how prey also use such perceptual information that decays with time to update their spatiotemporal risk assessment. We placed scorpions in freshly dug burrows and recorded the isopods’ spatial activity and their defense behavior upon encountering the burrows straight after settling the scorpions and seven days later. To corroborate our understanding, we also examined the isopods’ detailed reactions towards deserted scorpion burrows. The isopods reacted defensively to scorpion burrows duri...

动物通过调整自身空间行为以匹配捕食风险的时空变化，从而权衡捕食风险与其他关键生存需求之间的平衡。为了绘制这一‘恐惧景观(landscape of fear)’，猎物会演化出与捕食者活动及捕猎效率相关的经验法则。此外，猎物还会获取有关潜在捕食者的存在、种类及生理状态的感知信息，并借助这些线索强化其精准的反捕食防御反应。本研究旨在探究猎物是否以及如何利用这类随时间衰减的感知信息，来更新其对捕食风险的时空评估。我们将蝎子置入新挖掘的洞穴中，分别在蝎子刚定居洞穴时，以及7天后，记录潮虫的空间活动情况，以及它们遇到该洞穴时的防御行为。为验证我们的研究结论，我们还检测了潮虫对废弃蝎子洞穴的细致反应。潮虫会对蝎子洞穴表现出防御反应，在……