title: Habitat degradation disrupts neophobia in juvenile coral reef fish.
abstract: Habitat degradation not only disrupts habitat-forming species, but alters the sensory landscape within which most species must balance behavioural activities against predation risk. Rapidly developing a cautious behavioural phenotype, a condition known as neophobia, is advantageous when entering a novel risky habitat. Many aquatic organisms rely on damage-released conspecific cues (i.e. alarm cues) as an indicator of impending danger and use them to assess general risk and develop neophobia. This study tested whether settlement-stage damselfish associated with degraded coral reef habitats were able to use alarm cues as an indicator of risk and, in turn, develop a neophobic response at the end of their larval phase. Our results indicate that fish in live coral habitats that were exposed to alarm cues developed neophobia, and, in situ, were found to be more cautious, more closely associated with their coral shelters and survived four-times better than non-neophobic control fish. In contrast, fish that settled onto degraded coral habitats did not exhibit neophobia and consequently suffered much greater mortality on the reef, regardless of their history of exposure to alarm cues. Our results show that habitat degradation alters the efficacy of alarm cues with phenotypic and survival consequences for newly settled recruits.
authors.affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, College of Marine and Environmental Sciences, James Cook University, Townsville, Qld, 4811, Australia.
authors.forename: Mark I
authors.initials: MI
authors.lastname: McCormick
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, S7N 5E2, Canada.
authors.forename: Douglas P
authors.initials: DP
authors.lastname: Chivers
authors.affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, College of Marine and Environmental Sciences, James Cook University, Townsville, Qld, 4811, Australia.
authors.forename: Bridie J M
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Allan
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Sciences, WCVM, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, S7W 5B4, Canada.
authors.forename: Maud C O
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Ferrari
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D037421:Anthozoa; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D057894:Coral Reefs; D017753:Ecosystem; D005399:Fishes; D011235:Predatory Behavior
keywords: chemical alarm cues; climate change; coral degradation; coral reef fish; habitat loss; neophobia; olfactory cues; predator-prey interactions; risk assessment; survival