Preys' exploitation of predators' fear: when the caterpillar plays the Gruffalo.

ABSTRACT: Alike the little mouse of the Gruffalo's tale, many harmless preys use intimidating deceptive signals as anti-predator strategies. For example, several caterpillars display eyespots and face-like colour patterns that are thought to mimic the face of snakes as deterrents to insectivorous birds. We develop a theoretical model to investigate the hypothesis that these defensive strategies exploit adaptive cognitive biases of birds, which make them much more likely to confound caterpillars with snakes than vice versa. By focusing on the information-processing mechanisms of decision-making, the model assumes that, during prey assessment, the bird accumulates noisy evidence supporting either the snake-escape or the caterpillar-attack motor responses, which compete against each other for execution

SUBMITTER: Castellano S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4685775 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature