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Consumer patchiness explained by volatile infochemicals in a freshwater ecosystem
Author(s) -
Moelzner Jana,
Fink Patrick
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
ecosphere
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.255
H-Index - 57
ISSN - 2150-8925
DOI - 10.1890/es14-00246.1
Subject(s) - foraging , odor , ecology , ecosystem , habitat , abundance (ecology) , adaptation (eye) , freshwater ecosystem , biology , neuroscience
Many animal species show considerable spatial variation in abundance within their habitats. Since they live in patchy environments where food resources are often heterogeneously distributed, it would be adaptive for them to have efficient chemoreceptive mechanisms to locate food resources over distances. In the current study we investigated whether gastropod consumers perceive and pursue odorant signals in three choice experiments which were conducted under semi‐natural conditions. We tested the foraging behavior of freshwater snails to targets containing odorant stimuli and whether the recognition of food finding signals subsequently leads to the aggregation of grazers on the corresponding resource patch. We demonstrate that freshwater gastropods are able to recognize odor bouquets as foraging infochemicals and that grazing of conspecifics causes an aggregation of grazers under natural conditions. Further, they appear to be able to distinguish between high‐ and low‐quality food resources based on resource‐quality specific odor bouquets. Our results suggest that the perception of volatile cues is a process relevant on environmental scales and thus a possible mechanism to explain the frequently observed patchy distribution of grazers in ecosystems.

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