Figure 2
From: Brown rats and house mice eavesdrop on each other’s volatile sex pheromone components
Trap catch data revealing that house mice are averse to macro-locations (trap box pairs; see Fig. 1) indicative of brown rat presence. The treatment trap in each pair received the volatile synthetic sex attractant pheromone components of male house mice (testosterone, 3,4-dehydro-exo-brevicomin, 2-sec-butyl-4,5-dihydrothiazole) or brown rats (testosterone, 2-heptanone, 4-heptanone, 3-ethyl-2-heptanone, 2-octanone, 2-nonanone, 4-nonanone), whereas corresponding control trap boxes received testosterone only. Trap pair locations with rat pheromone components captured 3.05 times fewer mice than trap pair locations with mouse pheromone components, whereas trap pair locations with rat or mouse pheromone components captured equal numbers of rats, revealing predator-aversion behavior by mice and no evidence for prey-seeking behavior by rats. The asterisks indicate a significant difference in the number of mice captured in paired traps (χ2-tests with Yate’s correction for continuity compared against a theoretical 50:50 distribution, ** P < 0.01).
