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Raptors avoid the confusion effect by targeting fixed points in dense aerial prey aggregations
Collective behaviours are widely assumed to confuse predators, but empirical support for a confusion effect is often lacking, and its importance must depend on the predator’s targeting mechanism. Here we show that Swainson’s Hawks Buteo swainsoni and other raptors attacking swarming Mexican Free-tai...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9399121/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35999203 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-32354-5 |
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author | Brighton, Caroline H. Kloepper, Laura N. Harding, Christian D. Larkman, Lucy McGowan, Kathryn Zusi, Lillias Taylor, Graham K. |
author_facet | Brighton, Caroline H. Kloepper, Laura N. Harding, Christian D. Larkman, Lucy McGowan, Kathryn Zusi, Lillias Taylor, Graham K. |
author_sort | Brighton, Caroline H. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Collective behaviours are widely assumed to confuse predators, but empirical support for a confusion effect is often lacking, and its importance must depend on the predator’s targeting mechanism. Here we show that Swainson’s Hawks Buteo swainsoni and other raptors attacking swarming Mexican Free-tailed Bats Tadarida brasiliensis steer by turning towards a fixed point in space within the swarm, rather than by using closed-loop pursuit of any one individual. Any prey with which the predator is on a collision course will appear to remain on a constant bearing, so target selection emerges naturally from the geometry of a collision. Our results show how predators can simplify the demands on their sensory system by decoupling steering from target acquisition when capturing prey from a dense swarm. We anticipate that the same tactic will be used against flocks and schools across a wide range of taxa, in which case a confusion effect is paradoxically more likely to occur in attacks on sparse groups, for which steering and target acquisition cannot be decoupled. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9399121 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-93991212022-08-25 Raptors avoid the confusion effect by targeting fixed points in dense aerial prey aggregations Brighton, Caroline H. Kloepper, Laura N. Harding, Christian D. Larkman, Lucy McGowan, Kathryn Zusi, Lillias Taylor, Graham K. Nat Commun Article Collective behaviours are widely assumed to confuse predators, but empirical support for a confusion effect is often lacking, and its importance must depend on the predator’s targeting mechanism. Here we show that Swainson’s Hawks Buteo swainsoni and other raptors attacking swarming Mexican Free-tailed Bats Tadarida brasiliensis steer by turning towards a fixed point in space within the swarm, rather than by using closed-loop pursuit of any one individual. Any prey with which the predator is on a collision course will appear to remain on a constant bearing, so target selection emerges naturally from the geometry of a collision. Our results show how predators can simplify the demands on their sensory system by decoupling steering from target acquisition when capturing prey from a dense swarm. We anticipate that the same tactic will be used against flocks and schools across a wide range of taxa, in which case a confusion effect is paradoxically more likely to occur in attacks on sparse groups, for which steering and target acquisition cannot be decoupled. Nature Publishing Group UK 2022-08-23 /pmc/articles/PMC9399121/ /pubmed/35999203 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-32354-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Brighton, Caroline H. Kloepper, Laura N. Harding, Christian D. Larkman, Lucy McGowan, Kathryn Zusi, Lillias Taylor, Graham K. Raptors avoid the confusion effect by targeting fixed points in dense aerial prey aggregations |
title | Raptors avoid the confusion effect by targeting fixed points in dense aerial prey aggregations |
title_full | Raptors avoid the confusion effect by targeting fixed points in dense aerial prey aggregations |
title_fullStr | Raptors avoid the confusion effect by targeting fixed points in dense aerial prey aggregations |
title_full_unstemmed | Raptors avoid the confusion effect by targeting fixed points in dense aerial prey aggregations |
title_short | Raptors avoid the confusion effect by targeting fixed points in dense aerial prey aggregations |
title_sort | raptors avoid the confusion effect by targeting fixed points in dense aerial prey aggregations |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9399121/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35999203 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-32354-5 |
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