Dace, finescale

Fish avoid more vigorously the odor of predators that have fed on members of their species than that of those on different diets. For example, young Arctic chart avoid water from brown trout fed on Arctic chart and are less wary of that from pellet-fed trout (Hirvonen et ah, 2000). Prey fish also reduce their predator inspection behavior vis-a-vis predators that have eaten members of their own species. For instance, finescale dace, Phoxinus neogaeus, dash toward predators such as yellow perch, Percaflavescens, and withdraw. Dace inspect perch models less often if the model is accompanied by water from perch that had eaten dace than if accompanied hy water from perch on a swordtail, Xiphophorus hdleri, diet. Dace produce alarm pheromone, while swordtails do not. The Central American swordtails do not cooccur with finescale dace (Brown etal, 2001). 

Brown, G. E., Golub, J. L., and Plata, D. L. (2001). Attack cone avoidance during predator inspection visits by wild finescale dace Phoxinus neogaeus) the effect of predator diet. Journal of Chemical Ecology 17,1657-1666. 

Trap experiments have also been used to determine the chemical composition of Ostariophysan alarm cues. In a study by Brown et al. (2000), traps labeled with fathead minnow extract, hypoxanthine-3-N-oxide or pyridine-N-oxide caught significantly fewer fishes (including dace and minnow) than those labeled with distilled water. These field results validate the outcome of laboratory studies in which significant increases in antipredator behavior in both fathead minnows and finescale dace were observed when they... 

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