Kleptoparasitic prey competition in shoaling fish: effects of familiarity and prey distribution

Familiarity is thought to stabilize dominance hierarchies and reduce aggressive interactions within groups of socially living animals. Though familiarity has been widely studied in shoaling fish, few studies have investigated changes in prey competition as a function of time spent together within groups of initially unfamiliar individuals. In this study, we created shoals of three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) and monitored changes in foraging rates and related competitive behaviors within shoals over a 4-week period in experimental series where prey was spatially and temporally concentrated or dispersed. Prey share was unequal under both prey distribution modes, and disparity in prey share was not seen to change as trials progressed. Interestingly, the contest rate for prey items fell over time when individuals were competing for dispersed prey but not when prey were concentrated. We found no evidence that fish showed association preferences for either group members that had consumed a greater or lesser proportion of prey during trials. Though the intensity of competition may be reduced by increased group stability in nature, this is likely to be strongly dependent on the way prey resources are distributed through space and time.