Document Type

Article

Publication Title

PLoS ONE

Abstract

Presumably an individual’s risk of predation is reduced by group membership and this ‘safety in numbers’ concept has been readily applied to investigations of schooling prey; however, foraging in groups may also be beneficial. We tested the hypothesis that, when feeding in groups, foraging of a coastal fish (Florida Pompano, Trachinotus carolinus) on a benthic prey source would be facilitated (i.e. fish feeding in groups will consume more prey items). Although this question has been addressed for other fish species, it has not been previously addressed for Florida Pompano, a fish known to exhibit schooling behavior and that is used for aquaculture, where understanding the feeding ecology is important for healthy and efficient grow-out. In this experiment, juvenile Florida Pompano were offered a fixed number of coquina clams (Donax spp.) for one hour either in a group or as individuals. The following day they were tested in the opposite configuration. Fish in groups achieved greater consumption (average of 26 clams consumed by the entire group) than the individuals comprising the group (average of 14 clams consumed [sum of clams consumed by all individuals of the group]). Fish in groups also had fewer unsuccessful foraging attempts (2.75 compared to 4.75 hr-1) and tended to have a shorter latency until the first feeding activity. Our results suggest fish in groups were more comfortable feeding and more successful in their feeding attempts. Interestingly, the consumption benefit of group foraging was not shared by all – not all fish within a group consumed equal numbers of clams. Taken together, the results support our hypothesis that foraging in a group provides facilitation, but the short-term benefits are not equally shared by all individuals.

First Page

1

Last Page

11

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0130095

Publication Date

6-11-2015

Department

Marine and Environmental Sciences

Comments

Must use original publisher's citation to cite this work.

Copyright: © 2015 Schrandt, Powers. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability Statement: Relevant data are available at the following link: http://accession.nodc. noaa.gov/0127553.

Funding: Support for this project was provided by the University of South Alabama. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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