Effect of different predators on the escape response of Placopecten magellanicus

Abstract

To assess whether giant scallops, Placopecten magellanicus use distinct escape strategies to respond to their seastar and crustacean predators, escape responses to two major seastar predators, Asterias vulgaris and Leptasterias polaris, two seastars with little predatory impact, Crossaster papposus and Solaster endeca, and two crustacean predators, Cancer irroratus and Hyas araneus were compared. A glass rod served as a mechanical control. The responses of juvenile [2+ year (y), ~36-mm shell height (SH)] and adult (6+ y, ~100-mm SH) scallops from the Magdalen Islands, Quebec, Canada, were assessed in early summer 2005. The predatory seastars evoked the strongest response, in terms of both response latency and minimum interval between phasic contractions and numbers of phasic contractions, particularly early in the escape response. Both the minor seastar predators and crabs stimulated stronger responses than the mechanical control. Juvenile scallops were livelier than adult scallops. As P. magellanicus consistently responded to predators with an initial flurry of phasic contractions that tapered off to spaced phasic contractions separated by increasingly long tonic contractions, only the intensity of the escape response seems to have been modified by selection.