gulf of maine

Effects of predation risk passed down from parent to offspring

By Valerie Perini

Fear of predators can influence the activity and behavior of prey, with the potential for changes in resource and habitat use that may impact entire ecological communities. While many studies have investigated these impacts within a single prey generation, the question of how the impact of predation risk might be passed down from parent to offspring has been largely unexplored. To fill this gap, MSC PhD candidate Sarah Donelan and MSC Director Geoff Trussell used a model rocky intertidal food chain to investigate how the impacts of predation risk experienced by the parent generation may impact prey offspring.

In the study, appearing in the journal Ecology, Donelan and Trussell exposed the intertidal snail Nucella lapillus to predation risk cues from the green crab, Carcinus maenas, during snail reproduction, and compared offspring behavior to offspring whose parents had reproduced in a risk-free environment. Results indicate that risk-exposed parents give birth to emboldened offspring. Specifically, when exposed to predation risk, offspring of risk-exposed parents spent more time foraging out in the open and also maintained higher tissue levels than offspring of parents not exposed to risk, an indicator that these offspring were less impacted by stress from predation risk. These differences in offspring behavior are particularly compelling, since offspring were held in a risk free environment for one year after birth, before the researchers conducted the experiment measuring offspring behavior in the presence/absence of risk.

These results indicate that parental experience with risk might be important for offspring, especially when these offspring are exposed to similar stressors. This study highlights how traits transmitted from parent to offspring can influence species interactions with potential cascading impacts on ecological community dynamics.