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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
1

Behavioural ecology of foraging and predator avoidance trade-offs in Lake Sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens)

2014 April 1900 (has links)
I investigated Lake Sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens) foraging and anti-predator behaviour. My goals were to understand: (1) The role of environmental change on foraging and anti-predator behaviour trade-offs. (2) The relative cost/benefit trade-off between escape behaviour and cover-seeking behaviour. (3) How development of several independent morphological traits affects anti-predator behaviours. I used simulated river mesocosms to study Lake Sturgeon behavioural ecology under controlled conditions. I found: (1) Foraging intensity was significantly higher during the night than the day as well as in turbid environments versus clear environments, indicating that decreased turbidity alone, may in part drive anti-predator behaviour and constrain foraging activity. (2) In high-risk clear-water environments, Lake Sturgeon responded to danger by evoking an escape response and seeking cover in rocky microhabitats. However, in low-risk turbid environments, Lake Sturgeon responded to danger by seeking cover in rocky microhabitats, but not fleeing to a significant degree. Cover-seeking behaviour may therefore be a relatively low-cost/high-benefit anti-predator strategy. (3) Strong evidence for trait co-dependence between escape responses and body size, where larger fish were able to elicit stronger escape responses. I also found that cover-seeking behaviour exhibited a complex multi-tiered relationship, representing a mixture of trait compensation and trait co-specialization that is dependent on specific combinations of morphological traits. These findings are important because they help us understand: (1) The degree to which anti-predator behaviour can be influenced by changing environmental conditions. (2) The relative cost/benefit trade-off between two common anti-predator behaviours. (3) How behaviour and morphology interact in species with a complex anti-predator phenotype.

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