Life Sciences Commons^™

Antipredator Behavior And Physiology Determine Lestes Species Turnover Along The Pond-Permanence Gradient, Robby Stoks, Mark A. Mcpeek

Dartmouth Scholarship

Identifying key traits that shape trade-offs that restrict species to only a subset of environmental gradients is crucial to understanding and predicting species turnover. Previous field experiments have shown that larvae of Lestes damselfly species segregate along the entire gradient of pond permanence and predator presence and that differential predation risk and life history constraints together shape their distribution. Here, we report laboratory experiments that identify key differences in behavior and physiology among species that structure their distributions along this gradient. The absence of adaptive antipredator behavioral responses against large dragonfly larvae and fish of Lestes dryas, the only species …