Aposematism: balancing salience and camouflage.

ABSTRACT: Aposematic signals are often characterized by high conspicuousness. Larger and brighter signals reinforce avoidance learning, distinguish defended from palatable prey and are more easily memorized by predators. Conspicuous signalling, however, has costs: encounter rates with naive, specialized or nutritionally stressed predators are likely to increase. It has been suggested that intermediate levels of aposematic conspicuousness can evolve to balance deterrence and detectability, especially for moderately defended species. The effectiveness of such signals, however, has not yet been experimentally tested under field conditions. We used dough caterpillar-like baits to test whether reduced levels of aposematic conspicuousness can have survival benefits when predated by wild birds in natural c

SUBMITTER: Barnett JB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5014027 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature