Fathead minnows learn to recognize predator odour when exposed to concentrations of artificial alarm pheromone below their behavioural-response threshold
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Hypoxanthine-3-N-oxide (H3NO) has been identified as the putative alarm pheromone of ostariophysan fishes. Previously we demonstrated a population-specific minimum behavioural-response threshold in fathead minnows (Pimephales promelas) to a H3NO concentration of approximately 0.4 nM. Minnows may, however, perceive low concentrations of H3NO as a predation threat, even though they do not exhibit an overt behavioural response. We conducted a series of laboratory trials to test the hypothesis that minnows can detect the alarm pheromone at concentrations below the minimum behavioural-response threshold. We exposed predator-naïve fathead minnows to H3NO at concentrations ranging from 0.4 to 0.05 nM paired with the odour of a novel predator (yellow perch, Perca flavescens) or distilled water paired with perch odour. We observed significant increases in antipredator behaviour (increased shoal cohesion, movement towards the substrate, a reduction in feeding, and an increase in the occurrence of dashing and freezing behaviour) in shoals of minnows exposed to a combined cue of 0.4 nM H3NO and perch odour (compared with a distilled-water control), but not by shoals exposed to lower concentrations of H3NO paired with perch odour or those exposed to distilled water paired with perch odour. When exposed to perch odour alone 4 days later, minnows initially conditioned to H3NO at concentrations of 0.40.1 nM exhibited significant increases in antipredator behaviour. These data demonstrate that minnows attend to the alarm pheromone at concentrations below the minimum behavioural-response threshold and are able to acquire the ability to recognize a novel predator even though they do not exhibit an overt behavioural response.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".