{"354821":{"#nid":"354821","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Fish use chemical camouflage from diet to hide from predators","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EA species of small fish uses a homemade coral-scented cologne to hide from predators, a new study has shown, providing the first evidence of chemical camouflage from diet in fish.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFilefish evade predators by feeding on their home corals and emitting an odor that makes them invisible to the noses of predators, the study found. Chemical camouflage from diet has been previously shown in insects, such as caterpillars, which mask themselves by building their exoskeletons with chemicals from their food. The new study shows that animals don\u2019t need an exoskeleton to use chemical camouflage, meaning more animals than previously thought could be using this survival tactic\u003Cstrong\u003E.\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThis is the very first evidence of this kind of chemical crypsis from diet in a vertebrate,\u201d said \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.dixsonlab.com\/rohanbrooker\u0022\u003ERohan Brooker\u003C\/a\u003E, a post-doctoral fellow in the School of Biology at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. \u201cThis research shows that you don\u2019t need an exoskeleton that for this kind of mechanism to work.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe study was published December 10 in the journal \u003Cem\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org\/content\/282\/1799\/20141887\u0022\u003EProceedings of the Royal Society B\u003C\/a\u003E. \u003C\/em\u003EThe study was sponsored by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and the Ecological Society of Australia. The work was done as a part of Booker\u2019s doctoral research at James Cook University in Australia.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAnyone who has watched a nature documentary has seen insects that camouflage themselves as sticks, protecting the insects against predators that use vision to hunt for prey. But many animals see the world through smell rather than sight, and cunning critters from among them have adapted clever ways of smelling like their surroundings. A certain species of caterpillar, for example, smells like the plant that it lives on and eats. The caterpillar incorporates chemicals from the plant into its exoskeleton. Ants hunting for the caterpillar will walk right over it, none the wiser.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFor the new study, researchers traveled to Australia\u2019s \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/australianmuseum.net.au\/Lizard-Island-Research-Station\u0022\u003ELizard Island Research Station\u003C\/a\u003E in the Great Barrier Reef, where they collected filefish. To show that filefish smelled like their home coral, the researchers recruited crabs to sniff them out. The filefish were fed two different species of coral; each species of coral is home to a unique species of crab. The crabs were given a choice between a filefish that had been fed the crab\u2019s home coral and a filefish that had been fed a coral that is foreign to the crab. The crabs always sought the filefish that had been feeding on the crabs home coral. The filefish smelled so strongly of coral that sometimes the crabs were attracted to the fish instead of coral, when given a choice between the two.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe can tell that there is something going through the filefish diet that\u2019s making the fish smell enough like the coral to confuse the crabs,\u201d Booker said.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETo see if the chemical camouflage gives the filefish an evolutionary advantage to evade predators, the researchers tested cod to see how they responded to filefish that had been fed various diets. Cod, filefish and corals were put in a tank, with the filefish hidden from the cod. When the filefish diet didn\u2019t match the corals in the tank, the cod were restless, suggesting that they smelled food. When the filefish diet matched the corals in the tank, the cod stayed tucked away in their cave inside the tank.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe next step in the project is to learn how filefish can smell like coral without the benefit of an exoskeleton. Some evidence shows that amino acids in the mucus of fish \u2013 where much of their smell originates \u2013 will match their diet, but much work remains to tease apart this pathway.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe have established that there is some kind of pathway from filefish diet to filefish odor,\u201d Booker said. \u201cThis is just the first study. There\u2019s a lot of work still to be done to understand how it works.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBooker is now working in the lab of \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.dixsonlab.com\/\u0022\u003EDanielle Dixson\u003C\/a\u003E, an associate professor of biology at Georgia Tech.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003EThis research is supported by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and the Ecological Society of Australia. Any conclusions or opinions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the sponsoring agencies.\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ECITATION\u003C\/strong\u003E: Rohan Brooker, et al., \u201cYou are what you eat: diet-induced chemical crypsis in a coral-feeding fish.\u201d (\u003Cem\u003EProceedings of the Royal Society B\u003C\/em\u003E, December 2014). \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org\/content\/282\/1799\/20141887\u0022 title=\u0022http:\/\/rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org\/content\/282\/1799\/20141887\u0022\u003Ehttp:\/\/rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org\/content\/282\/1799\/20141887\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EResearch News\u003Cbr \/\u003E Georgia Institute of Technology\u003Cbr \/\u003E 177 North Avenue\u003Cbr \/\u003E Atlanta, Georgia\u0026nbsp; 30332-0181\u0026nbsp; USA\u003Cbr \/\u003E \u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/twitter.com\/GTResearchNews\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003E@GTResearchNews\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EMedia Relations Contacts\u003C\/strong\u003E: Brett Israel (\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/twitter.com\/btiatl\u0022\u003E@btiatl\u003C\/a\u003E) (404-385-1933) (\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:brett.israel@comm.gatech.edu\u0022\u003Ebrett.israel@comm.gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E) or John Toon (404-894-6986) (\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:jtoon@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Ejtoon@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E)\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EWriter\u003C\/strong\u003E: Brett Israel\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"A species of small fish uses a homemade coral-scented cologne to hide from predators, a new study has shown, providing the first evidence of chemical camouflage from diet in fish."}],"uid":"27902","created_gmt":"2014-12-11 10:39:27","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:17:41","author":"Brett Israel","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2014-12-11T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2014-12-11T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"354801":{"id":"354801","type":"image","title":"Filefish","body":null,"created":"1449245743","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 16:15:43","changed":"1475895084","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:51:24","alt":"Filefish","file":{"fid":"202024","name":"tane_sinclair-taylor-0735.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/tane_sinclair-taylor-0735.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/tane_sinclair-taylor-0735.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":2644887,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/tane_sinclair-taylor-0735.jpg?itok=chPBqWj3"}},"354811":{"id":"354811","type":"image","title":"Rohan Booker","body":null,"created":"1449245743","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 16:15:43","changed":"1475895084","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:51:24","alt":"Rohan Booker","file":{"fid":"202025","name":"collecting2.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/collecting2.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/collecting2.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":2086702,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/collecting2.jpg?itok=oY8RIe5q"}}},"media_ids":["354801","354811"],"groups":[{"id":"1188","name":"Research Horizons"}],"categories":[{"id":"154","name":"Environment"},{"id":"146","name":"Life Sciences and Biology"}],"keywords":[],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39441","name":"Bioengineering and Bioscience"}],"news_room_topics":[{"id":"71911","name":"Earth and Environment"}],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EBrett Israel\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E404-385-1933\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/btiatl\u0022\u003E@btiatl\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["brett.israel@comm.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}