ArticleScientific reports2015
Learning to distinguish between predators and non-predators: understanding the critical role of diet cues and predator odours in generalisation.
Article in Scientific reports, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Body size and mortality rates in coral reef fishes: a three-phase relationship.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2016Pooled it
- ManyFishes: a big team science collaboration on fish comparative cognition.Animal cognition · 2025Review
- Recognition of predator cues hinders social communication.Biology letters · 2025Article
- Embryonic exposure to artificial light at night impairs learning abilities and their covariance with behavioural traits in teleost fish.Biology letters · 2023Article
- Fears from the past? The innate ability of dogs to detect predator scents.Animal cognition · 2020Article
- The ability of damselfish to distinguish between dangerous and harmless sea snakes.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Coral degradation alters predator odour signatures and influences prey learning and survival.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Testing social learning of anti-predator responses in juvenile jackdaws: the importance of accounting for levels of agitation.Royal Society open science · 2018Article
- Knocking on Heaven's Door: Are Novel Invaders Necessarily Facing Naïve Native Species on Islands?PloS one · 2016Article
- Predator metamorphosis and its consequence for prey risk assessment.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
- Long-term exposure to elevated carbon dioxide does not alter activity levels of a coral reef fish in response to predator chemical cues.Behavioral ecology and sociobiologyArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
It is critical for prey to recognise predators and distinguish predators from non-threatening species. Yet, we have little understanding of how prey develop effective predator recognition templates. Recent studies suggest that prey may actually learn key predator features which can be used to recognise novel species with similar characteristics. However, non-predators are sometimes mislabelled as predators when generalising recognition. Here, we conduct the first comprehensive investigation of how prey integrate information on predator odours and predator diet cues in generalisation, allowing them to discriminate between predators and non-predators. We taught lemon damselfish to recognise a predator fed a fish diet, and tested them for their response to the known predator and a series of novel predators (fed fish diet) and non-predators (fed squid diet) distributed across a phylogenetic gradient. Our findings show that damselfish distinguish between predators and non-predators when generalising recognition. Additional experiments revealed that generalised recognition did not result from recognition of predator odours or diet cues, but that damselfish based recognition on what they learned during the initial conditioning. Incorporating multiple sources of information enables prey to develop highly plastic and accurate recognition templates that will increase survival in patchy environments where they have little prior knowledge.
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