PREY NUTRITIONAL QUALITY INTERACTS WITH CHEMICAL DEFENSES TO AFFECT CONSUMER FEEDING AND FITNESS

作者：Edwin Cruz‐Rivera, Mark E. Hay · 发表于：Ecological Monographs · 年份：2003 · DOI：10.1890/0012-9615(2003)073[0483:pnqiwc]2.0.co;2 · 被引用次数：178 · 研究领域：Plant and animal studies、Insect Utilization and Effects、Insect and Arachnid Ecology and Behavior

Numerous studies have assessed the individual effects of prey nutritional quality or chemical defenses on consumer feeding behavior. However, little is known about how these traits interact to affect consumer feeding and performance. We tested the separate and interactive effects of prey chemical defenses and nutritional quality on the feeding behavior and fitness of six sympatric crustacean mesograzers. Natural concentrations of diterpene alcohols (dictyols) from the brown alga Dictyota menstrualis were incorporated, or not incorporated, into lower quality and higher quality foods to create artificial diets mimicking prey of variable value and defense. Five amphipods (Ampithoe longimana, A. valida, Cymadusa compta, Gammarus mucronatus, and Elasmopus levis) and one isopod (Paracerceis caudata), representing a continuum of closely to distantly related organisms, were fed intact algae or lower and higher quality diets containing or lacking dictyols. All six mesograzers preferred the green alga Enteromorpha intestinalis to the dictyol producing alga Dictyota menstrualis. In assays allowing consumers to choose between simultaneously available foods, dictyols deterred feeding by all five amphipods, but not the isopod; this occurred for both lower and higher quality foods. In no-choice assays, where consumers were confined with only one of our four treatment diets, effects on feeding became more complex. Nutritional quality alone affected feeding by five of the six species. These g...