Correction to: ‘How do developmental and parental exposures to predation affect personality and immediate behavioural plasticity in the snail Physa acuta?'

Proc. R. Soc. B 287, 20201761 (Published Online 23 December 2020) (doi:10.1098/rspb.2020.1761)

Most references are incorrect in the paragraph of the discussion ‘(a) Developmental and parental environments influenced group mean in personality and immediate plasticity'. This paragraph is given below with the corrected references in bold. The reference list is given afterwards.

(a). Developmental and parental environments influenced group mean in personality and immediate plasticity

Contrary to our expectations, developmental and parental exposures to predator cues reduced group mean in immediate plasticity. More specifically, snails had on average a reduced anti-predator immediate plasticity if they or their parents were exposed to a risk of predation, to the extent that exposed snails from exposed parents (PP snails) were not plastic to immediate predator cues. Concerning group mean in personality, in the immediate predator-free environment, parental and developmental environments had no effect on group mean in personality (i.e. similar mean escape behaviour among offspring from developmental and parental environments). But in the immediate predator-cue environment, both developmental and parental exposures to predator cues induced on average a slower escape. Cues of the past presence of predators might be conflicting cues in an immediate predator-free environment, whereas they might give relevant information in a predator-cue environment. In the literature on transgenerational plasticity, there is conflicting experimental evidence regarding the direction of the effects of parental and developmental exposures to predator cues on anti-predator behaviour. Parental and developmental exposures increase mean anti-predator behaviour in most cases (e.g. [25,34,35]). This pattern is traditionally explained as preadaptation: if cues present at the parental generation or during development accurately predict the presence of predators in the future environment, individuals already exhibiting anti-predator behaviour are pre-adapted to the presence of predators. Conversely, parental and developmental exposures to predator cues can reduce mean anti-predator behaviour [16,20], as in our study. Snails may exhibit low anti-predator behaviour because they are already protected from predators by morphological defences (trait compensation (e.g. [33,58,59,60])), thus saving the costs of having both morphological and behavioural defences. Parental and developmental exposures to predator cues can induce the production of morphological defences in many species (e.g. [17,61]), including P. acuta (thicker shell [25]). However, some studies have rather shown that individuals with high morphological defences also have high anti-predator behaviour (trait co-specialization [62,63]). The compensation or co-specialization of behavioural and morphological defences may depend on the efficiency of the defences and predator density [64]. On the other hand, snails may exhibit low anti-predator behaviour because they are strongly habituated to predator cues (crayfish and alarm odours). Habituation is a simple form of learning that occurs when behaviour response to a persistent stimulus is reduced [65]. Habituation may persist a while after the stimulus has disappeared (long-term habituation [65]). In the context of predation, long-term habituation has been demonstrated after repeated exposure to harmless predator cues [66,67]. This habituation may involve sensory habituation, where olfactory receptors lose their sensitivity to the odour as the odour persist. This sensory habituation is thought to allow an animal to focus its cognitive resources on a new or changing odour and better respond to it [68]. This habituation may also involve an active and complex decision from a higher cognitive centre. This would allow the prey to stop regarding a cue as dangerous after a long period of time without being attacked, thus reducing the costs associated with anti-predator behaviour [69,70]. In our case, predator-exposed snails were subjected for 53 days to predator odour and behavioural assessments started a few days after exposure to the predator odour had ceased. Predator-exposed snails may have become habituated to this predator odour and may have reduced their response to a novel exposure of this same predator odour. However, transgenerational transmission of habituation has never been highlighted to our knowledge, even if the transgenerational transfer of conditioning or sensory imprinting to an odour have already been described in nematods, rodents and butterflies [19,36,37].