Poison Frog Colors Are Honest Signals of Toxicity, Particularly for Bird Predators
Poison Frog Colors Are Honest Signals of Toxicity, Particularly for Bird Predators
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DOI：
10.1086/663197
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发表时间：
2012-01-01
影响因子：
2.9
通讯作者：
Cummings, Molly E.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Maan, Martine E.;Cummings, Molly E.
反掠食者防御和警告信号通常是一致进化的。然而，对于捕食者威慑的这两个组成部分在不同分类群之间的广泛差异以及它们之间的关系还知之甚少。在这里，我们测试是否有一个预测之间的关系，在10个种群的颜色多态性草莓毒蛙，Dendrobates pumilio的视觉显著性和毒性水平。使用基于小鼠的毒性测定，我们发现青蛙种群之间的毒性差异极大。这种变化与青蛙着色亮度显著正相关，这是一种独立于观察者的视觉显著性测量（即，总反射通量）。我们还研究了显着性，从三个潜在的捕食者类群，以及同种青蛙，使用分类特定的视觉检测模型和三个自然背景基板。我们发现非常强的正相关关系青蛙毒性和醒目的鸟类特定的感知模型。蟹类与D. pumilio同种视觉感知，而青蛙着色作为蛇是不相关的毒性。这些结果表明，毒蛙的颜色可以是诚实的信号，猎物不适口的捕食者和鸟类，特别是可能会施加选择警戒信号设计。
Antipredator defenses and warning signals typically evolve in concert. However, the extensive variation across taxa in both these components of predator deterrence and the relationship between them are poorly understood. Here we test whether there is a predictive relationship between visual conspicuousness and toxicity levels across 10 populations of the color-polymorphic strawberry poison frog, Dendrobates pumilio. Using a mouse-based toxicity assay, we find extreme variation in toxicity between frog populations. This variation is significantly positively correlated with frog coloration brightness, a viewer-independent measure of visual conspicuousness (i.e., total reflectance flux). We also examine conspicuousness from the view of three potential predator taxa, as well as conspecific frogs, using taxon-specific visual detection models and three natural background substrates. We find very strong positive relationships between frog toxicity and conspicuousness for bird-specific perceptual models. Weaker but still positive correlations are found for crab and D. pumilio conspecific visual perception, while frog coloration as viewed by snakes is not related to toxicity. These results suggest that poison frog colors can be honest signals of prey unpalatability to predators and that birds in particular may exert selection on aposematic signal design.