Adaptive Sex Specific Cognitive Bias in Predation Behaviours of Japanese Pygmy Squid
Errors in decision making in animals can be partially explained by adaptive evolution, and error management theory explains that cognitive biases result from the asymmetric costs of false positive and false negative errors. Error rates that result from the cognitive bias may differ between sexes. In addition, females are expected to have higher feeding rates than males because of the high energy requirements of gamete production. Thus, females may suffer relatively larger costs from false negative errors (i.e. non feeding) than males, and female decisions would be biased to reduce these costs if the costs of false positive errors are not as high. Females would consequently overestimate their capacity in relation to the probability of predation success. We tested this hypothesis using the Japanese pygmy squid Idiosepius paradoxus. Our results show that size differences between the squid and prey shrimp affected predatory attacks, and that predatory attacks succeeded more often when the predator was relatively larger than the prey. Nevertheless, compared to male predatory attacks, female squid frequently attacked even if their size was relatively small compared to the prey, suggesting that the females overestimated their probability of success. However, if the females failed in the first attack, they subsequently adjusted their attack threshold: squid did not attack again if the prey size was relatively larger. These results suggest a sex specific cognitive bias, that is females skewed judgment in decision making for the first predation attack, but they also show that squid can modify their threshold to determine whether they should attack in subsequent encounters.