A death in the family: Sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) avoidance of confamilial alarm cues diminishes with phylogenetic distance

Alarm signals released after predator attack function as reliable public information revealing areas of high risk. The utility of this information can extend beyond species boundaries, benefiting heterospecifics capable of recognizing and responding appropriately to the signal. Nonmutually exclusive hypotheses explaining the acquisition of heterospecific reactivity to cues suggest it could be conserved phylogenetically following its evolution in a common ancestor (a species-level effect) and/or learned during periods of shared risk (a population-level effect; e.g., shared predators). Using a laboratory-based space-use behavioral assay, we tested the response of sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) to the damage-released alarm cues of five confamilial (sympatric and allopatric) species and two distantly related out-groups: a sympatric teleost (white sucker Catostomus commersonii) and an allopatric agnathan (Atlantic hagfish Myxine glutinosa). We found that sea lamprey differed in their response to conspecific and heterospecific odors; exhibiting progressively weaker avoidance of cues derived from more phylogenetically distant confamilials regardless of current overlap in distribution. Odors from out-groups elicited no response. These findings suggest that a damage-released alarm cue is at least partially conserved within the Petromyzontidae and that sea lamprey perceives predator attacks directed to closely related taxa. These findings are consistent with similar observations from gastropod, amphibian and bony fish taxa, and we discuss this in an eco-evo context to provide a plausible explanation for the acquisition and maintenance of the response in sea lamprey.