• Proc. Biol. Sci. · Aug 2004

    Comparative Study

    Inclusive fitness benefits of scent-marking predators.

    • Edward B Mondor and Bernard D Roitberg.
    • Behavioural Ecology Research Group, Department of Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia V5A 1S6, Canada. mondor@entomology.wisc.edu
    • Proc. Biol. Sci. 2004 Aug 7; 271 Suppl 5: S341-3.

    AbstractBecause relatedness is high and dispersal is limited, one would expect to see higher levels of altruistic behaviour among clonal organisms than among animals of lesser relatedness. Enigmatically, however, parthenogenetic aphids do not emit alarm signals when a predator first enters a colony but only after being captured. Here, we report that an aphid smearing alarm pheromone directly onto a predator decreases the predation risk for clone-mates as the predator continues to search for additional prey. Adult multicoloured Asian ladybird beetles, Harmonia axyridis, daubed with alarm pheromone caused a greater proportion of aphids to drop off a plant and escape predation than did predators lacking pheromone droplets. Thus, along with direct fitness benefits of individual protection, aphid alarm signalling behaviour may have evolved through inclusive fitness benefits of protecting clone-mates by scent-marking predators.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…