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  • Title: Coral-reef fishes can become more risk-averse at their poleward range limits.
    Author: Coni EOC, Booth DJ, Nagelkerken I.
    Journal: Proc Biol Sci; 2022 Mar 30; 289(1971):20212676. PubMed ID: 35317673.
    Abstract:
    As climate warms, tropical species are expanding their distribution to temperate ecosystems where they are confronted with novel predators and habitats. Predation strongly regulates ecological communities, and range-extending species that adopt an effective antipredator strategy have a higher likelihood to persist in non-native environments. Here, we test this hypothesis by comparing various proxies of antipredator and other fitness-related behaviours between range-extending tropical fishes and native-temperate fishes at multiple sites across a 730 km latitudinal range. Although some behavioural proxies of risk aversion remained unaltered for individual tropical fish species, in general they became more risk-averse (increased sheltering and/or flight initiation distance), and their activity level decreased poleward. Nevertheless, they did not experience a decline in body condition or feeding rate in their temperate ranges. Temperate fishes did not show a consistently altered pattern in their behaviours across range locations, even though one species increased its flight initiation distance at the warm-temperate location and another one had lowest activity levels at the coldest range location. The maintenance of feeding and bite rate combined with a decreased activity level and increased sheltering may be behavioural strategies adopted by range-extending tropical fishes, to preserve energy and maintain fitness in their novel temperate ecosystems.
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