Mechanismen und Funktionen von kollektivem Anti-Räuber-Verhalten

• Antragsteller: Dr. David Bierbach
• Fachliche Zuordnung: Biologie des Verhaltens und der Sinne
• Förderung: Förderung von 2018 bis 2022
• Projektkennung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 408308973

• Erstellungsjahr: 2023

Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse

This research project aimed at investigating both the ultimate function and the proximate mechanisms underlying the occurrence of repeated animal fright waves. As a study system, we choose sulphuradapted livebearing fishes (genera Poecilia and Gambusia) that respond to bird predation by performing collective fright responses. We first show that the system undergoes diurnal changes driven by predictable changes in dissolved oxygen availability leading to phases of hypoxia in the afternoon that force fish to spent their time at the surface and thus attract their common predators (birds). As an anti-predator strategy, fish dive down collectively and repeatedly thus create highly conspicuous water waves that lead birds to delay their attacks and in part also reduce the birds hunting success. Interestingly, fish can distinguish bird attacks from harmless overflies by integrating multiple cues into their individual diving characteristics. Further we showed that the fish collectives seemingly operate at a so-called critical point between a state of high individual diving activity and low overall diving activity. This enables the collective to act most sensitive to outside disturbances and spread information on disturbances extremely fast throughout the whole collective. Lastly, we show that both Sulphur-adapted fish species perform heterospecific shoaling although gambusia was found to not reacting as strongly as Sulphur mollies towards bird attacks. Overall, our project was able to achieve the majority of the set aims and goals producing several publications in high ranked journals, integrated into a cluster of excellence and provided unique research experiences thus promoted the carrier of a large number of students at various academic stages and institutions.

Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)

• Acoustic and visual stimuli combined promote stronger responses to aerial predation in fish. Behavioral Ecology, 32(6), 1094-1102.
  Lukas, Juliane; Romanczuk, Pawel; Klenz, Haider; Klamser, Pascal; Arias, Rodriguez Lenin; Krause, Jens & Bierbach, David
  
• Diurnal Changes in Hypoxia Shape Predator-Prey Interaction in a Bird-Fish System. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 9 (2021, 3, 18).
  Lukas, Juliane; Auer, Felix; Goldhammer, Tobias; Krause, Jens; Romanczuk, Pawel; Klamser, Pascal; Arias-Rodriguez, Lenin & Bierbach, David
  
• Fish waves as emergent collective antipredator behavior. Current Biology, 32(3), 708-714.e4.
  Doran, Carolina; Bierbach, David; Lukas, Juliane; Klamser, Pascal; Landgraf, Tim; Klenz, Haider; Habedank, Marie; Arias-Rodriguez, Lenin; Krause, Stefan; Romanczuk, Pawel & Krause, Jens
  
• Fish shoals resemble a stochastic excitable system driven by environmental perturbations. Nature Physics, 19(5), 663-669.
  Gómez-Nava, Luis; Lange, Robert T.; Klamser, Pascal P.; Lukas, Juliane; Arias-Rodriguez, Lenin; Bierbach, David; Krause, Jens; Sprekeler, Henning & Romanczuk, Pawel
  
• Multispecies collective waving behaviour in fish. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 378(1874).
  Lukas, Juliane; Krause, Jens; Träger, Arabella Sophie; Piotrowski, Jonas Marc; Romanczuk, Pawel; Sprekeler, Henning; Arias-Rodriguez, Lenin; Krause, Stefan; Schutz, Christopher & Bierbach, David