An Analysis of Predator Selection to Affect Aposematic Coloration in a Poison Frog Species.

ABSTRACT: Natural selection is widely noted to drive divergence of phenotypic traits. Predation pressure can facilitate morphological divergence, for example the evolution of both cryptic and conspicuous coloration in animals. In this context Dendrobatid frogs have been used to study evolutionary forces inducing diversity in protective coloration. The polytypic strawberry poison frog (Oophaga pumilio) shows strong divergence in aposematic coloration among populations. To investigate whether predation pressure is important for color divergence among populations of O. pumilio we selected four mainland populations and two island populations from Costa Rica and Panama. Spectrometric measurements of body coloration were used to calculate color and brightness contrasts of frogs as an indicator of conspicu

SUBMITTER: Dreher CE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4481408 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature