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- Title
Effects of habitat complexity on cannibalism rates in European green crabs ( Carcinus maenas Linnaeus, 1758).
- Authors
Gehrels, Hannah; Tummon Flynn, Paula; Cox, Ruth; Quijón, Pedro A.
- Abstract
The habitat in which predator-prey interactions take place may have a profound influence on the outcome of those interactions. Cannibalism is an intriguing form of predation whereby foraging by predators may contribute to the regulation of their own populations.This is particularly interesting in the case of invasive species, like the widely distributed European green crab ( Carcinus maenas). This study explores how habitat complexity influences cannibalism rates in green crab populations of Prince Edward Island, Atlantic Canada. Both laboratory and field experiments were conducted to measure feeding rates by individual adult green crabs on a standard number of smaller conspecifics. In the laboratory, experimental treatments mimicked unstructured to increasingly structured habitats: water, sandy bottom, oyster shells, mussel shells, oyster shells with sandy bottom and mussel shells with sandy bottom. In those trials, adult green crabs consumed several times more juveniles on unstructured habitats than on the most structured ones, with a gradual decrease in predation rates across increasingly complex habitats. Field inclusion experiments used the same approach and were conducted in sandy bottoms, sandy bottoms with a layer of oyster shells and sandy bottoms with a layer of mussel shells. These trials showed similar patterns of decreasing feeding rates across increasingly complex habitats, but differences among treatments were not significant. These results support the idea that complex habitats have the potential to mediate predator-prey interactions, including adult-juvenile cannibalism in green crabs.
- Subjects
PRINCE Edward Island; CANNIBALISM in animals; CARCINUS maenas; PREDATION; FORAGING behavior; OYSTER shell
- Publication
Marine Ecology, 2017, Vol 38, Issue 5, pn/a
- ISSN
0173-9565
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/maec.12448