BIOL 354 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Countershading, Aposematism, Coevolution
11 Oct 2017
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Document Summary
Ns for ef cient foraging in predators may select for improvements in prey defences which will then lead to improvements in predator tactics and further changes in prey defences. Antagonistic interaction leading to reciprocal evolutionary change is termed. Co-evolution", and any escalation of adaptations and counter-adaptations has been likened to an arms race. If both predators and prey improve over evolutionary time then, whereas their tactics may change, the relative success of each party may not do so. Prey cannot suddenly evolve perfect counter-adaptations any more than a vertebrate could instantly evolve a perfect complex structure, such as an eye. Different colour forms coexisting within the same population. When a predator discovers a moth it may form a search image of that colour pattern and concentrate on looking for one that looks the same. But then the predator that has a search image for one morph may miss the other morphs.
