Fearful symmetry: pattern size and asymmetry affects aposematic signal efficacy
Fearful symmetry: pattern size and asymmetry affects aposematic signal efficacy
复制标题
DOI：
10.1023/a:1006630911975
复制
发表时间：
1999-01-01
影响因子：
1.9
通讯作者：
Merilaita, S
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Forsman, A;Merilaita, S
警戒动物使用反捕食者防御机制，如厌恶加上独特的气味，声音或颜色图案，以表明它们对潜在捕食者的不利影响。通过对具有不同视觉信号的人工“蝴蝶”进行捕食，我们表明，这种视觉警告显示器的保护价值通过增加信号图案元素的大小而增强，并且通过图案不对称性而降低。这些结果提供了第一个实验证据，捕食可能会选择个人对称的视觉警告显示器，并同意与早期的演示，不对称信号更难检测，学习和记住，对称信号相比。总的来说，我们的研究结果表明，猎物物种拥有警告色应受到选择大和对称的图案元素。
Aposematic animals use anti-predator defence mechanisms such as distastefulness coupled with distinctive odours, sounds, or colour patterns to signal their unprofitability to potential predators. By subjecting artificial 'butterflies' with different visual signals to predation from domestic chicks we show that the protective value of such visual warning displays is enhanced by increasing size of the signal pattern elements and decreased by pattern asymmetry. These results provide the first experimental evidence that predation may select for individual symmetry of visual warning displays, and concur with earlier demonstrations that asymmetric signals are more difficult to detect, learn, and remember, compared to symmetric signals. Collectively, our findings suggest that prey species possessing warning coloration should be subjected to selection for large and symmetric pattern elements.