DOI: 10.5061/dryad.kwh70rz44
title: Predation risk shapes the use of conflicting personal risk and social safety information in guppies

description: When faced with uncertainty, animals can benefit from using multiple
 sources of information in order to make an optimal decision. However,
 information sources (e.g., social and personal cues) may conflict, while
 also varying in acquisition cost and reliability. Here, we assessed
 behavioral decisions of Trinidadian guppies (Poecilia reticulata), in
 situ, when presented with conflicting social and personal information
 about predation risk. We positioned foraging arenas within high- and
 low-predation streams, where guppies were exposed to a personal cue in the
 form of conspecific alarm cues (a known indicator of risk), a novel cue,
 or a control. At the same time, a conspecific shoal (a social safety cue)
 was either present or absent. When social safety was absent, guppies in
 both populations showed typical avoidance responses towards alarm cues,
 and high-predation guppies showed their typical avoidance of novel cues
 (i.e., neophobia). However, the presence of social safety cues was
 persuasive, overriding the neophobia of high-predation guppies and
 emboldening low-predation guppies to ignore alarm cues. Our experiment is
 one of the first to empirically assess the use of safety and risk cues in
 prey, and suggests a threshold level of ambient risk which dictates the
 use of conflicting social and personal information.
description: Data was collected in March 2019 in the Lopinot and Upper Aripo
 Rivers of the Northern Range Mountains of Trinidad. 
 For Experiment 1, we conducted field observations by gently
 placing a novel foraging arena (corrugated plastic; ~30x25x23 cm) into
 stream pools at locations that visibly contained at least 5 guppies in
 locations without visible currents or higher velocities. For half of the
 trials, the social safety cue was present, consisting of 3 female guppies
 inside a clear 1-L chamber (~7x7x24 cm) filled with stream water and
 gravel (~3 cm depth). For the other half of trials, the chamber was filled
 with water and gravel but did not contain guppies. We began our trials by
 gently injecting 10 mL of one of the three personal cue treatments (alarm
 cue, novel cue, or stream water) through airline tubing on the back wall
 of the arena before flushing the tubing with 60 mL of stream water and
 beginning a 5-min observation period. We recorded the latency for guppies
 to enter the foraging zone (crossing from the approach zone into the
 foraging zone), as well as the latency to forage inside the foraging zone.
 These two latencies could correspond to two different guppies. After each
 trial, we moved at least 1 m upstream before initiating the next trial,
 which ensured we avoided re-testing guppies or testing downstream guppies
 potentially exposed to the experimental cues from previous trials. The cue
 treatments were randomly assigned, and we conducted a total of 90 trials
 per population (180 total), with a sample size of 15 per treatment
 group.  For Experiment 2, we conducted a behavioral
 assay to determine whether the movement activity of our experimental
 shoals differed between the high- and low-predation streams (30 trials
 from each population). From each stream, we collected 90 female guppies in
 total, moving 3 individuals at a time into 1-L chambers that were
 positioned on a flat surface along the stream bank. The chamber again
 contained stream water (0.75 L) and gravel, was surrounded by opaque walls
 on 3 sides to minimize external visual stimuli, and was demarcated into 4
 quadrants by exterior lines. After a 1-min acclimation period, we tallied
 the total number of lines crossed by all 3 guppies over a 1-min
 observation period. We also recorded whether the line crosses were dashes
 (rapid bursts of movement with the entire body crossing the line in under
 0.5 s) or were calmer movements that are typical of normal swimming
 behavior (&gt; 0.5 s). After each trial, we recorded the standard
 length (head to caudal peduncle) of each fish and released them at their
 site of capture.  All analyses were conducted in
 RStudio 3.4.1 using α = 0.05. Full Methodology can be
 found in Feyten et al. (2021), Behavioral Ecology.
description: We have attached a ReadMe file for usage notes and variable
 lists.