title: Anuran tadpoles learn to recognize injury cues from members of the same prey guild.
abstract: Recognition of predation risk from cues released from injured heterospecific could be beneficial when prey belongs to the same prey guild. Here, we performed three experiments. Experiment 1 showed that P. thaul tadpoles reduced their activity levels when exposed to conspecific injury cues, but not when exposed to amphipod injury cues. Experiment 2 tested whether P. thaul tadpoles can learn to recognize predation risk from chemical cues released from injured heterospecifics from the same prey guild (amphipod, Hyalella patagonica). A group of tadpoles were conditioned by exposing them to a specific concentration of amphipod injury cues paired with conspecific injury cues. Two days later, we evaluated changes in the activity of tadpoles when they were exposed to amphipod cues. As a control of learning, we used an unpaired group. Additionally, we used more control groups to fully investigate the learning mechanism. Our results showed that tadpoles can learn to recognize predation risk from injured amphipods and that the mechanism underlying the observed learned response could be associative. Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 2 and also showed that a low concentration of amphipod cues did not sustain that learning.
authors.affiliation: Laboratorio de Fotobiología- INIBIOMA (CONICET-UNComa), Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente, Centro Regional Universitario Bariloche-Universidad Nacional del Comahue, San Carlos de Bariloche, Rio Negro, Argentina. mpueta@gmail.com.|Departamento de Biología General. (CRUB-UNComa), Centro Regional Universitario Bariloche-Universidad Nacional del Comahue, San Carlos de Bariloche, Rio Negro, Argentina. mpueta@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Mariana
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-9837-4718
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pueta
authors.affiliation: Laboratorio de Fotobiología- INIBIOMA (CONICET-UNComa), Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente, Centro Regional Universitario Bariloche-Universidad Nacional del Comahue, San Carlos de Bariloche, Rio Negro, Argentina.
authors.forename: Maria Gabriela
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Perotti
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001001:Anura; D003463:Cues; D007814:Larva; D007858:Learning; D011235:Predatory Behavior
keywords: Amphipods; Anuran tadpoles; Associative learning; Predation risk