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Conspicuous colours reduce predation rates in fossorial uropeltid snakes

Uropeltid snakes (Family Uropeltidae) are non-venomous, fossorial snakes that are found above ground occasionally, during which time they are exposed to predation. Many species are brightly coloured, mostly on the ventral surface, but these colours are expected to have no function below the ground....

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Autores principales: Cyriac, Vivek Philip, Kodandaramaiah, Ullasa
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6698130/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31428543
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7508
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author Cyriac, Vivek Philip
Kodandaramaiah, Ullasa
author_facet Cyriac, Vivek Philip
Kodandaramaiah, Ullasa
author_sort Cyriac, Vivek Philip
collection PubMed
description Uropeltid snakes (Family Uropeltidae) are non-venomous, fossorial snakes that are found above ground occasionally, during which time they are exposed to predation. Many species are brightly coloured, mostly on the ventral surface, but these colours are expected to have no function below the ground. Observations have shown that the cephalic resemblance (resemblance to heads) of uropeltid tails may direct attacks of predators towards the hardened tails, thereby potentially increasing handling times for predators. Experiments have also shown that predators learn to avoid prey that are non-toxic and palatable but are difficult to capture, hard to process or require long handling time when such prey advertise their unprofitability through conspicuous colours. We here postulate that uropeltid snakes use their bright colours to signal long handling times associated with attack deflection to the tails, thereby securing reduced predation from predators that can learn to associate colour with handling time. Captive chicken experiments with dough models mimicking uropeltids indicate that attacks were more common on the tail than on the head. Field experiments with uropeltid clay models show that the conspicuous colours of these snakes decrease predation rates compared to cryptic models, but a novel conspicuous colour did not confer such a benefit. Overall, our experiments provide support for our hypothesis that the conspicuous colours of these snakes reduce predation, possibly because these colours advertise unprofitability due to long handling times.
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spelling pubmed-66981302019-08-19 Conspicuous colours reduce predation rates in fossorial uropeltid snakes Cyriac, Vivek Philip Kodandaramaiah, Ullasa PeerJ Animal Behavior Uropeltid snakes (Family Uropeltidae) are non-venomous, fossorial snakes that are found above ground occasionally, during which time they are exposed to predation. Many species are brightly coloured, mostly on the ventral surface, but these colours are expected to have no function below the ground. Observations have shown that the cephalic resemblance (resemblance to heads) of uropeltid tails may direct attacks of predators towards the hardened tails, thereby potentially increasing handling times for predators. Experiments have also shown that predators learn to avoid prey that are non-toxic and palatable but are difficult to capture, hard to process or require long handling time when such prey advertise their unprofitability through conspicuous colours. We here postulate that uropeltid snakes use their bright colours to signal long handling times associated with attack deflection to the tails, thereby securing reduced predation from predators that can learn to associate colour with handling time. Captive chicken experiments with dough models mimicking uropeltids indicate that attacks were more common on the tail than on the head. Field experiments with uropeltid clay models show that the conspicuous colours of these snakes decrease predation rates compared to cryptic models, but a novel conspicuous colour did not confer such a benefit. Overall, our experiments provide support for our hypothesis that the conspicuous colours of these snakes reduce predation, possibly because these colours advertise unprofitability due to long handling times. PeerJ Inc. 2019-08-14 /pmc/articles/PMC6698130/ /pubmed/31428543 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7508 Text en © 2019 Cyriac and Kodandaramaiah https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Animal Behavior
Cyriac, Vivek Philip
Kodandaramaiah, Ullasa
Conspicuous colours reduce predation rates in fossorial uropeltid snakes
title Conspicuous colours reduce predation rates in fossorial uropeltid snakes
title_full Conspicuous colours reduce predation rates in fossorial uropeltid snakes
title_fullStr Conspicuous colours reduce predation rates in fossorial uropeltid snakes
title_full_unstemmed Conspicuous colours reduce predation rates in fossorial uropeltid snakes
title_short Conspicuous colours reduce predation rates in fossorial uropeltid snakes
title_sort conspicuous colours reduce predation rates in fossorial uropeltid snakes
topic Animal Behavior
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6698130/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31428543
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7508
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