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Mar

20

2007
 
 

Tough school



You all look so tempting!Predatory reef fish selectively target rare prey to avoid confusion If you’re rare – at least if you’re a juvenile reef fish – your chances aren’t good. A series of experiments by James Cook University’s Glenn Almany and colleagues suggest that predators target rare fish species, making them particularly prone to local extinction. Almany’s study, published in Oecologia, examined how a common reef fish, the brown dottyback Pseudochromis fuscus, selected its dinner from a smörgåsbord of juvenile damselfish species. The dottyback repeatedly went for the rarer prey. Almany and colleagues explain the counterintuitive result as being a way for a hungry predator to avoid confusion: too many brightly-colored moving targets can hinder success, whereas concentrating on the odd one out increases the chance of enjoying a tasty meal. Source: Almany GR, Peacock LF, Syms C, McCormick MI & Jones GP (2007) Predators target rare prey in coral reef fish assemblages. Oecologia DOI: 10.1007/s00442-007-0693-3 Image © Tommy Schultz

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