Intra- and Interspecific Foraging and Feeding Interactions in Three Sea Stars and a Gastropod from the Deep Sea

19 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, supplementary materials https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/biology12060774/s1.-- Data Availability Statement: Data are available upon request to the primary author

Competitive interactions come in a variety of forms and may be modulated by the size and number of individuals involved, and/or the resources available. Here, intra- and interspecific competitive behaviours for food (i.e., foraging/food search and feeding/food ingestion) were experimentally characterized and quantified in four co-existing deep-sea benthic species. Three sea stars (Ceramaster granularis, Hippasteria phrygiana, and Henricia lisa) and one gastropod (Buccinum scalariforme) from the bathyal Northwest Atlantic were investigated using video trials in darkened laboratory conditions. A range of competitive or cooperative behaviours occurred, depending on species (conspecific or heterospecific), comparative body size, and the number of individuals involved. Contrary to expectations, small individuals (or smaller species) were not always outcompeted by larger individuals (or larger species) when foraging and feeding. Moreover, faster species did not always outcompete slower ones while scavenging. Overall, this study sheds new light on scavenging strategies of co-existing deep-sea benthic species in food-limited bathyal environments, based on complex behavioural inter- and intraspecific relationships

This work was supported in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) via grants awarded to A.M. [...] J.A. is a member of the Tecnoterra Associated Research Unit (ICM-CSIC/UPC) and supported by the Spanish Government through the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S)

Peer reviewed