Aspects of Antipredator Responses in the Green-lipped Mussel Perna Viridis

Antipredator responses are behavioural and/or morphological responses of prey being induced upon exposure to chemical cues released from predators, damaged conspecifics and/or heterospecifics to reduce predation risk. The present study will investigate several aspects of these responses in mussels. The first one is whether byssus production as an antipredator response changes with the position in a mussel clump, considering that there is a trade-off between reducing predation risk and enhancing food consumption. The second one is whether the identity of the consumer or the digested products of consumer is more important to the induction of antipredator responses. The third one will investigate whether antipredator responses induced in laboratory conditions can be verified by field experiments. The last one is whether hypoxia has any effects on the induction of antipredator responses, considering that energy supply to the prey via oxidation of food under hypoxia is reduced and there is a trade-off between growth and induction of antipredator responses.