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Article History

Received: 8 May 2025

Revised: 15 December 2025

Accepted: 31 December 2025

First Online: 2 April 2026

Declarations

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: All animal use was approved by the author’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee and care was taken to minimize stress of animals. We used power analyses with the ‘pwr’ package in R (Champely ) to identify the minimum number of animals while maintaining statistical integrity using effect sizes from similar studies assessing predator effects in guppies (Torres-Dowdall et al. ; Fischer et al. ; Stein and Hoke ; Leri and Stein ; Merritt et al. ). Housing conditions in the laboratory adhered to the most recent ASAB/ABS Guidelines at the time of data collection (“Guidelines for the ethical treatment of nonhuman animals in behavioural research and teaching,” ) for the treatment of animals in behavioral research and teaching.Guppies were kept in social groups with refuges differing in color, texture, and space for enrichment. Refuges included floating yarn mops at the top of the water column and black plastic plants at the bottom of the water column. For behavioral assays and measurements, individuals were gently but quickly netted and transferred in opaque containers, and assays were performed from behind a blind to minimize stress. Light cycles and water chemistry mimicked natural conditions as closely as possible, and daily health and water quality checks were conducted daily. Guppies were returned to home tanks and remained under laboratory care following this experiment.Similar to guppy tanks, the pike cichlid tank contained refuges differing in colour, texture, and space for enrichment. Refuges included floating green yarn mops at the top of the water column, as well as black plastic plants and PVC pipe at the bottom of the water column. Pike cichlids are solitary predators and thus our cichlid was housed individually in a 75-litre tank (50.8 × 55.9 × 30.5 cm). Following this experiment, the pike cichlid remained under laboratory care and was used for additional projects.

: The authors declare no competing interests.