Mantis shrimp will fight to keep their burrows, even if they're not the perfect home

Mantis shrimp will fight to keep their burrows, even if they're not the perfect home

Patek lab alum Patrick Green (currently a postdoc at the University of Exeter) and PhD candidate Jacob Harrison just published in Animal Behaviour showing that, when presented with empty burrows, shrimps prefer homes that are a tad too large. When faced with occupied burrows, however, intruders fought hardest for homes that were slightly smaller than ideal. Read more in this press release by the University of Exeter. 
CITATION: Green, P. A., Harrison, J. S., Quadratic resource value assessment during mantis shrimp (Stomatopoda) contests. Animal Behaviour, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2020.09.014