Figure 4. Acoustic noise increases startle responses but does not affect total food consumption.

Response of foraging sticklebacks to playbacks of silence (S), brief (10 s) white noise (BN) and prolonged (300 s) white noise (PN). Bars show mean±1s.e.m. response for 24 fish during each playback of a repeated-measures experiment, with significant (** p≤0.01) and non-significant (ns p≥0.05) posthoc differences indicated (paired t-tests with Bonferroni correction). Brief noise and prolonged noise both significantly affected (A) the number of startle responses, but had no significant effect on (B) the total number of food items consumed.