Lionfish Uses Tactic to Win Race Against Fast-Swimming Prey

Lionfish are not the fastest predators people would find on the reef, although a new study recently suggested that they capture switch prey through determination, swimming slowly in search until the perfect moment to strike.

A ScienceNews report specified that the study's findings might help explain the effect of the lionfish as an evasive species and show a key hunting technique that other relatively slow predators use.

Embellished with long striped spines, lionfish can make their surreal silhouettes vanish against a coral reef backdrop long enough to talk and eventually ambush tiny fish.

However, in their report published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B journal, the predators feed in open water, where they are more visible.

Lionfish Chasing Down a Green Chromis Observed

Curious about how the predators are hunting in plain view, comparative biomechanist Ashley Peterson from the University of California, Irvine, and her colleagues placed red lionfish or Pterois volitans in a tank and recorded them while they were chasing down a green chromis or Chromis viridis, a tiny reef fish, which is detailed in the FishBase site.

Fourteen out of 23 trials showed that the lionfish succeeded in gulping down their prey. They also had a high rate of strike success, catching the chromis in 74 percent of the trials where the lionfish were making a strike attempt.

On average, the chromis swam about two times as fast as the lionfish. However, many still fell victim to what Peterson and Matthew McHenry, a biomechanist at the University of California, Irvine, call a persistent-predation technique.

Such a technique involves lionfish swimming toward a chromis, aiming for its present position, not the direction to intercept its path. More so, the pursuit of the lionfish is "steady and incessant," according to the research team.

'Slow and Steady' Lionfish

Peterson explained that if they are interested in something and want to attempt to eat it, they appear not to give up.

On the contrary, the prey fish carries out bursts of fast swimming along with short pauses. Over time, Peterson said, all those pauses add up and allow the lionfish "to get closer and closer and closer."

Then, he continued that the slightest mistake or bit of distraction can censure the prey to the suction-creation jaws of the lionfish.

According to marine ecologist Bridie Allan, from the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, who was not part of the study, this is a good example of the saying, "slow and steady wins the race."

Allan also said it would be quite interesting to discover how the unwavering chase plays out in the wild, where there are no spatial limitations as in a tank.

Persistent-Predation Strategy

Suppose lionfish utilize the technique in the wild and prey react similarly. In that case, the technique could probably contribute to the destructive probability of their invasion in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and Western Atlantic, where the fish are devouring native ocean animals, not to mention disrupting food webs.

Nevertheless, other factors like the huge appetite of the lionfish or prolific reproduction could be more influential on invasiveness.

According to Peterson, the persistent-predation strategy may not be exclusive to this fish species. Other predatory fish groups comprising sluggish swimmers like the Aulostomus spp. could use it.

Related information about lionfish is shown on Deep Marine Scenes' YouTube video below:

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