Predator-Prey Avoidance Flashcards
What are two strategies to avoid going extinct due to predation?
Defense
Refugia
What is defense?
Stay and don’t get eaten in the first place
What are refugia?
Seek refuge from predators
What is fight back?
Mobbing or attacking predator through chemical or mechanical means
Learning experience for predator
What is aposematic strategy?
Bright or conspicuous coloration displayed by many toxic or distasteful potential prey species
What is Mullerian mimicry?
Mimicking of warning signals among different poisonous species
What is Batesian mimicry?
A type of mimicry by non-toxic species to resemble toxic species
What is spatial refugia?
Seek refuge where predators cannot find you
What are the costs to reaching refugia?
Costs energy and hampers foraging opportunities but fitness benefits outweigh the costs
What is protection in numbers?
Have populations so large that the risk of any one individual being eaten is low
What happens when predator and prey are put in water (Gause’s experiment)?
Did not result in oscillations predicted by the Lotka-Volterra predatory-prey model
Prey and predator go extinct
What happened when Gause created refugia for prey?
Prey are able to hide effectively so that they predator died
What happened when Gause created immigration by restocking the prey population?
Oscillations occurred as predicted by the Lotka-Volterra models
Immigration created artificially = critique
What is the rescue effect?
individuals from larger populations may immigrate and rescue smaller populations
What are the pros and cons of being big?
Pro = too big to be eaten
Con = takes a lot of energy to maintain large body size
What traits will plants select for (avoidance)?
Make them less likely to be eaten (resistance)
Reduce the harm while being eaten (tolerance)
What are constitutive defenses?
Produced continuously, regardless of what happens to the plant
What are induced defenses?
Concentrations of a defensive chemical increase rapidly in response to herbivore damage
What are examples of constitutive chemical resistance?
Toxins
Digestion-reducing compounds
Why are plants with toxic alkaloids more represented in the tropics than in temperate regions?
Tropical areas have more diverse communities of herbivores
Greater variety of herbivores = greater variety of defenses needed
Herbivory decreases with what?
Latitude
Why don’t plants have warning coloration?
Plants other than green would lead to less photosynthesis
Why is fruit not selected against?
Eating ripe fruit does not damage plants
There should not be selection against it from the standpoint of herbivory avoidance
Why should flower colour not be selected against?
Flower colour displayed by plant species attracts pollinators
