Top-down effects on antagonistic inducible defense and offense

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概要

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• Antagonistic phenotypic plasticity may strongly influence trait evolution in tightly interacting predator-prey pairs as well as the role that trait plasticity plays in community dynamics. Most work on trait plasticity has focused on single predator-prey pairs, but prey must often contend with multiple predators in natural environments. Hence, a better understanding of the evolutionary and ecological significance of phenotypic plasticity requires experiments that examine how multiple predators shape prey trait plasticity. Here, using a simple food chain consisting of a top predator (dragonfly larvae, Aeshna nigroflava), an intermediate predator (salamander larvae, Hynobius retardatus), and frog (Rana pirica) tadpoles as prey, we show that the presence of dragonfly risk cues substantially modifies the intensity of antagonistic morphological plasticity in both amphibians. In the absence of dragonflies, tadpoles produced bulgier bodies in response to salamanders, and salamanders responded to this defense by enlarging their gape size. However, in the presence of dragonfly risk cues, the expression of both antagonistic traits was significantly reduced because tadpoles and salamanders produced phenotypes that are more effective against dragonfly predators. Thus, the reduced antagonism likely emerged, in part, because the benefits of antagonistic trait expression were outweighed by the potential cost of increased vulnerability to dragonfly predation. In addition, our results suggest that when all three species were present, salamander activity levels, which influence the amount of signals required to induce antagonistic traits, were more strongly affected by dragonfly risk cues than were tadpole activity levels. This species-specific difference in activity levels was likely responsible for the reduced tadpole mortality caused by salamanders in the presence vs. absence of dragonfly risk cues. Hence, dragonflies had a positive trait-mediated indirect effect on tadpoles by modifying both the morphological and behavioral traits of salamanders.

• Ecological Society of Americaの論文

著者

• Nishimura Kinya

  Graduate School Of Fisheries Sciences Hokkaido University

• KISHIDA Osamu

  Center for Ecological Research, Kyoto University

• Kishida Osamu

  Center For Ecological Research Kyoto University

• Trussell Geoffrey

  Marine Science Center Northeastern University

関連論文

• Coupling of two competitive systems via density dependent migration
• Top-down effects on antagonistic inducible defense and offense
• Geographic variation in a predator-induced defense and its genetic basis
• DIFFERENTIATED REACTION NORMS UNDER DIFFERENT SELECTIONS IN POLYMORPHISM: BROAD-HEADED MORPH IN HYNOBIUS RETARDATUS(Behavior Biology and Ecology)(Proceedings of the Seventy-Third Annual Meeting of the Zoological Society of Japan)
• GENETIC BASIS OF PHENOTYPIC PLASTICITY FOR PREDATOR-INDUCED MORPHOLOGICAL DEFENSES IN ANURAN TADPOLE USING cDNA SUBTRACTION AND MICROARRAY ANALYSIS(Taxonomy and Systematics,Abstracts of papers presented at the 76^ Annual Meeting of the Zoological Soci
• Identification of a Novel Uromodulin-Like Gene Related to Predator-Induced Bulgy Morph in Anuran Tadpoles by Functional Microarray Analysis
• Inducible defenses in prey intensify predator cannibalism
• Evolutionary ecology of inducible morphological plasticity in predator-prey interaction : toward the practical links with population ecology

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