Hi all !!
I will be presenting a part of my research in
The 57th Annual Conference of the Animal Behavior Society
July, 28-31, 2020
Talk titled: Which vehicle to ride on? Hitchhiker’s dilemma in an ephemeral microcosm
Abstract:
Hitchhikers use vehicles to move out of an unsuitable habitat and to reach a safe location having abundant resources for their propagation. They not only need to avoid overcrowded vehicles but also may require to travel with conspecifics to ensure mates at their destination. Hence, a “trade-off” between overcrowding and access to mates should occur especially when destination sites are distant, ephemeral and unique. Here, we explore if co-traveler density in the vehicle can regulate hitchhiker’s vehicular choice. A series of choice assays were conducted to examine the trade-off effects on hitchhiker’s choice and the mechanism involved. Our experimental findings show that guaranteed access to mates and vehicle overcrowding by conspecifics determines hitchhiker choice. Hitchhikers used volatile cues to discriminate between vehicles with different conspecific nematode densities and didn’t distinguish between vehicles with different heterospecific density. These results further have implications for how density-dependent effects and hitchhiker’s behavior repertoire can help in maintenance of phoretic interaction within core mutualisms, and thus for the stability of such interactions.
N.B. *if you have registered to this virtual conference do see my presentation.
**If you are using the images present in this post do mention Pic credit: Satyajeet Gupta
** This piece of scientific work is under review in "Journal of Animal Ecology" IF=4.46
Also the presentation will be uploaded in this website also after the conference end date.
Feel free to contact me for more information
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