BIOL3046 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Aposematism, Deimatic Behaviour, Guppy
5 Jul 2018
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Animal Behaviour BIOL3046 460381099
Lecture 19: Predator vs. prey.
• Trading off risk vs. reward: Risks affect animals decisions, from foraging to courting.
• Predation as a selective force: Example: Guppies are predated, leads to guppies which
live faster and die young (grow and mature faster). Allows for determination of rate of
evolution. This is also true for tadpoles, however this is reversible in tadpoles when the
predators are removed.
Animal personality
• Consistent individual tendency to accept risk and gain reward, and correlates across
contexts.
• Continuum across a population, with a combination of shy and bold individuals.
• So why be bold? Faster growth, earlier and more reproductive opportunities, as the
opposite sex fancies this. Can they choose to be bold? Probably no.
• When comparing between populations, animals that live with predators seem to be
bolder. Interestingly, metabolic scope and ‘boldness’ is increased with exercise.
Innate recognition
• Requires sympatry in evolutionary time (visual, chemical and auditory cues). Use these
to determine potential risks in their environment.
• Learning can be required by experience, however experience may be fatal.
Maternal effects
• Female field cricket exposed to predator cues, warn eggs prior to being laid. Thus,
offspring were more wary than controls, passed on by chemical cues.
• Exposing these chemical cues after hatching, does not prove to be successful, thus it is
solely a maternal effect.
Knowing your enemy
• Animals can gain understanding of threat directly through experience or indirectly.
How do animals know what is and what isn’t a threat
• Collect social information, possibly by conducting a predator inspection.
The predation sequence
• Need patterns and colour to disrupt predation. Best to have disruptive markings, where
markings touch edges, as well as crypsis, where the underside of the wings have
markings.
Document Summary
This is also true for tadpoles, however this is reversible in tadpoles when the predators are removed. Faster growth, earlier and more reproductive opportunities, as the opposite sex fancies this. Probably no: when comparing between populations, animals that live with predators seem to be bolder. I(cid:374)teresti(cid:374)gly, (cid:373)eta(cid:271)oli(cid:272) s(cid:272)ope a(cid:374)d (cid:858)(cid:271)old(cid:374)ess(cid:859) is i(cid:374)(cid:272)reased (cid:449)ith exercise. Innate recognition: requires sympatry in evolutionary time (visual, chemical and auditory cues). Use these to determine potential risks in their environment: learning can be required by experience, however experience may be fatal. Maternal effects: female field cricket exposed to predator cues, warn eggs prior to being laid. Thus, offspring were more wary than controls, passed on by chemical cues: exposing these chemical cues after hatching, does not prove to be successful, thus it is solely a maternal effect. Knowing your enemy: animals can gain understanding of threat directly through experience or indirectly.
