Food acquisition and predator avoidance in a Neotropical rodent

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2013.11.012

Animal Behaviour

Volume 88, February 2014, Pages 41-48

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2013.11.012 Get rights and content

Highlights

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We quantified prey and predator activity levels using camera traps and telemetry.
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Timing of agouti kills by ocelots was disproportionate to agouti activity levels.
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Agoutis woke up later and went to sleep earlier as food availability was higher.
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Agoutis avoided activity at high-risk times more strongly as access to food was higher.
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This study provides quantitative empirical evidence of the trade-off between food and fear.

Foraging activity in animals reflects a compromise between acquiring food and avoiding predation. The risk allocation hypothesis predicts that prey animals optimize this balance by concentrating their foraging activity at times of relatively low predation risk, as much as their energy status permits, but empirical evidence is scarce. We used a unique combination of automated telemetry, manual radiotelemetry and camera trapping to test whether activity at high risk times declined with food availability as predicted in a Neotropical forest rodent, the Central American agouti, Dasyprocta punctata. We found that the relative risk of predation by the main predator, the ocelot, Leopardus pardalis, estimated as the ratio of ocelot to agouti activity on camera trap photographs, was up to four orders of magnitude higher between sunset and sunrise than during the rest of the day. Kills of radiotracked agoutis by ocelots during this high-risk period far exceeded expectations given agouti activity. Both telemetric monitoring of radiotagged agoutis and camera monitoring of burrow entrances indicated that agoutis exited their burrows later at dawn, entered their burrows earlier at dusk and had lower overall activity levels when they lived in areas with higher food abundance. Thus, agoutis avoided activity during the high-risk period more strongly when access to food was higher. Our study provides quantitative empirical evidence of prey animals concentrating their activity at times of relatively low predation risk.

Section snippets

Site and Species

Fieldwork was conducted between October 2008 and May 2010 on Barro Colorado Island (BCI) in Panama (9°10′N, 79°51′W). BCI is a 16 km² island located in the Gatun Lake of the Panama Canal, covered with a diverse semideciduous lowland moist tropical forest in different successional stages. Annual rainfall averages 2600 mm, with a marked dry period between December and April (Leigh, 1999). BCI has been protected from poaching since 1960 and has an almost complete mammal fauna (Wright, Gompper, &

Temporal Pattern of Predation Risk

Agouti activity (N = 29 390 camera trap observations, 2.6 per day) was almost exclusively during daytime, with 94.9% occurring between sunrise and sunset (Fig. 1a). By contrast, ocelot activity (N = 490 observations; 0.044 per day) was heavily biased but not limited to night-time and twilight, with 77.8% of observations occurring between sunset and sunrise (Fig. 1a). Activity overlap between the two species was largest around sunrise and sunset. The ratio of ocelot to agouti observations was 1:60

Discussion

Theory predicts that prey animals optimize the balance between food acquisition and predator avoidance by concentrating their foraging activity at times of relatively low predation risk, as much as their energy status permits (e.g. McNamara and Houston, 1986, Whitham and Mathis, 2000), but empirical evidence is scarce (but see Creel et al., 2008, Kotler et al., 2004, Mukherjee et al., 2009). Our study provides quantitative empirical evidence for avoidance of periods of high predation risk by a

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge field support from Meg Crofoot, Annemarie Winkelhagen, Torrey Rodgers, Matthew Mc Elroy, Sumana Serchan, Daniel Rasmussen and Jose Alejandro Silva, technical support with the ARTS system from Daniel Obando and Alejandro Ortega, and logistical support from Belkys Jimenez, Oris Acevedo and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. We thank Ron Ydenberg, Peter Bednekoff, Andrew King and four anonymous referees for constructive comments. Financial support was provided

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View full text

Food acquisition and predator avoidance in a Neotropical rodent

Highlights

Section snippets

Site and Species

Temporal Pattern of Predation Risk

Discussion

Acknowledgments

Animal Behaviour

Hormones and Behavior

Animal Behaviour

Animal Behaviour

Advances in the Study of Behavior

The effect of flexible growth rates on optimal sizes and development times in a seasonal environment

American Naturalist

Home-range use by the Central American agouti (Dasyprocta punctata) on Barro Colorado Island, Panama

Journal of Tropical Ecology

Ocelot (Leopardus pardalis) predation on agouti (Dasyprocta punctata)

Biotropica

Interaction between food availability and predation mortality mediated by adaptive behavior

Ecology

Effect of food and predators on the activity of four larval ranid frogs

Ecology

Circadian activity pattern with two peaks

Ecology

Foraging in the face of danger

Look before you leap: is risk of injury a foraging cost?

Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology

Complex state-dependent games between owls and gerbils

Ecology Letters

A radio-tracking system for wild animals

Journal of Wildlife Management

Adaptive daily strategies in behaviour

Density, habitat use and activity patterns of ocelots (Leopardus pardalis) in the Atlantic forest of Misiones, Argentina

Journal of Zoology

Effects of food availability on space and refuge use by a Neotropical scatter-hoarding rodent

Biotropica

Food availability and tiger shark predation risk influence bottlenose dolphin habitat use

Ecology

Generalized optimal risk allocation: foraging and antipredator behavior in a fluctuating environment

American Naturalist

Directed seed dispersal towards areas with low conspecific tree density by a scatter-hoarding rodent

Ecology Letters

Effects of predation risk and hunger on the behaviour of two species of tadpoles

Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology

General results concerning the trade-off between gaining energy and avoiding predation

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences

Large-scale spatial variation in palm fruit abundance across a tropical moist forest estimated from high-resolution aerial photographs

Ecography

Thieving rodents as substitute dispersers of megafaunal seeds

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Tracking animal location and activity with an automated radio telemetry system in a tropical rainforest

Computer Journal