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First published online November 19, 2007
Journal of Experimental Biology 210, 4150-4158 (2007)
Published by The Company of Biologists 2007
doi: 10.1242/jeb.010173

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Predator detection in Lymnaea stagnalis

Michael V. Orr, Malik El-Bekai, Melissa Lui, Katrina Watson and Ken Lukowiak^*

Hotchkiss Brain Institute, Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, T2N 4N1

^* Author for correspondence (e-mail: lukowiak{at}ucalgary.ca)

Accepted 18 September 2007

Laboratory-reared Lymnaea are capable of detecting and responding to the scent of a crayfish predator. The present investigation is a first attempt to characterize multiple stress-related behavioural responses resulting from predator detection and to depict the neurophysiological correlates of one of these illustrated behaviours. Snails respond to crayfish effluent (CE) by increasing the following behaviours: aerial respiration, exploratory/searching phase and sensitivity to the shadow-elicited full-body withdrawal response. In contrast, when snails detect CE they decrease both their righting response time when dislodged from the substratum and their basal cutaneous oxygen consumption. Interestingly, basal heart rate does not change in response to CE exposure. Finally, we directly measured the activity of the neuron that initiates aerial respiratory behaviour, RPeD1, in semi-intact preparations. Naïve snails exposed to CE prior to recording demonstrated both a significantly reduced spontaneous firing rate and fewer bouts of bursting activity compared with non-exposed snails. These data show that laboratory-reared Lymnaea that have never experienced a natural predator are still capable of detecting and responding to the presence of a historically sympatric predator. These data open a new avenue of research, which may allow a direct investigation from the behavioural to the neuronal level as to how an ecologically relevant stressful stimulus alters behaviour.

Key words: Lymnaea, crayfish, sympatric predator, defensive behaviours, predator–prey interactions

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LONG MEMORIES

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JEB 2007 210: i. [Full Text]  

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				L. Blackburn LONG MEMORIES J. Exp. Biol., December 1, 2007; 210(23): i - i. [Full Text] [PDF]