Freezing or death feigning? Beetles selected for long death feigning showed different tactics against different predators.

ABSTRACT: Prey evolve antipredator strategies against multiple enemies in nature. We examined how a prey species adopts different predation avoidance tactics against pursuit or sit-and-wait predators. As prey, we used three strains of Tribolium beetles artificially selected for short (short strain) or long (long strain) duration of death feigning, and a stock culture (base population). Death feigning is known to be effective for evading a jumping spider in the case of the long strains, while the present study showed that the long-strain beetles used freezing against a sit-and-wait type predator, Amphibolus venator, in this study. The short- strain beetles were more easily oriented toward predators. The time to predation was also shorter in the short strains compared to the long strains

SUBMITTER: Asakura M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8820118 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature