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- Aronsson, Marianne, 1978-, et al.
(författare)
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Colour and pattern similarity in mimicry : evidence for a hierarchical discriminative learning of different components
- 2012
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Ingår i: Animal Behaviour. - : Elsevier BV. - 0003-3472 .- 1095-8282. ; 84:4, s. 881-887
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Many aposematic species combine their bright colours with a black pattern that produces internal contrasts. Studies have shown that birds often pay attention to some parts of a signalling pattern and disregard others, which could be of importance in Batesian mimicry, where a palatable species copies the visual appearance of a distasteful model in order to deceive predators. We used domestic chicks, Gallus gallus domesticus, and artificial prey signals to investigate whether predators use different warning colour components for discrimination depending on the degree of information about prey quality they convey. This study supports earlier findings of the importance of colour for discrimination among prey but also provides evidence that other less associable signal properties such as internal patterning, when holding valuable discriminatory information, can be used to assess prey quality in a hierarchical manner. The results also suggest that, in certain circumstances, the presence of a palatable mimic can have positive effects on learning, resulting in 'super-Mullerian' effects. We propose that the degree of selection for perfect mimicry may be dependent on the proportion of well-educated predators in the population.
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| 3. |
- Aronsson, Marianne, 1978-
(författare)
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Colour patterns in warning displays
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In aposematism a prey species use bright colours, often combined with a black contrasting pattern, to signal unprofitability as prey to potential predators. Although there are several different hypotheses about the presence of these internally contrasting patterns, there is little experimental evidence of any beneficial effects. In this thesis I have used bird predators and artificial prey signals to investigate if the contrasting internal patterns in warning displays may have evolved to increase signal efficacy, especially regarding the speed of avoidance learning. In paper I the relative importance of colour and pattern in avoidance learning was studied. The conclusion was that birds primarily attend to colour, not pattern, when learning the discrimination, which was further supported by the results in paper II-IV, all suggesting a secondary role of patterns. In paper II I show that predators may to some degree use patterns for discrimination, if they convey important information about prey quality. The predators showed a hierarchical way of learning warning colour components, where colour is learned to a higher degree than pattern. In paper III I investigate if internal contrasting patterns promote avoidance learning by increasing conspicuousness as prey-to-background contrast does. The study did not support this idea, as the presence of internal black patterns did not improve avoidance learning on a colour matching background. In paper IV, however, I show that the presence of many internal colour boundaries resulted in faster avoidance learning on a multi-coloured background, and predator generalization favoured more internal boundaries, while there was no effect of pattern regularity. From these studies I conclude that internal pattern contrasts may function to increase the efficacy of the warning colour, its salience, and as a means for aposematic prey to be discriminated from harmful mimics. However, the major finding is the importance of colour over pattern.
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