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Testing bird-driven diurnal trade-offs of the moon moth's anti-bat tail

Traits are often caught in a dynamic tension of countervailing evolutionary pressures. Trade-offs can be imposed by predators evolutionarily curtailing the conspicuousness of a sexually selected trait, or acting in opposition to another natural selection pressure, for instance, a different predator...

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Autores principales: Rubin, Juliette J., Martin, Nich W., Sieving, Kathryn E., Kawahara, Akito Y.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9890116/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36722145
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2022.0428
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author Rubin, Juliette J.
Martin, Nich W.
Sieving, Kathryn E.
Kawahara, Akito Y.
author_facet Rubin, Juliette J.
Martin, Nich W.
Sieving, Kathryn E.
Kawahara, Akito Y.
author_sort Rubin, Juliette J.
collection PubMed
description Traits are often caught in a dynamic tension of countervailing evolutionary pressures. Trade-offs can be imposed by predators evolutionarily curtailing the conspicuousness of a sexually selected trait, or acting in opposition to another natural selection pressure, for instance, a different predator with a divergent hunting strategy. Some moon moths (Saturniidae) have long hindwing tails that thwart echolocating bat attacks at night, allowing the moth to escape. These long tails may come at a cost, however, if they make the moth's roosting form more conspicuous to visually foraging predators during the day. To test this potential trade-off, we offered wild-caught Carolina wrens (Thryothorus ludovicianus) pastry dough models with real Actias luna wings that were either intact or had tails experimentally removed. We video recorded wrens foraging on models and found that moth models with tails did not experience increased detection and attack by birds. Thus, this elaborate trait, while obvious to human observers, does not seem to come at a cost of increased avian predator attention. The evolution of long hindwing tails, likely driven by echolocating predators at night, does not seem to be limited by opposing diurnal constraints. This study demonstrates the importance of testing presumed trade-offs and provides hypotheses for future testing.
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spelling pubmed-98901162023-05-12 Testing bird-driven diurnal trade-offs of the moon moth's anti-bat tail Rubin, Juliette J. Martin, Nich W. Sieving, Kathryn E. Kawahara, Akito Y. Biol Lett Animal Behaviour Traits are often caught in a dynamic tension of countervailing evolutionary pressures. Trade-offs can be imposed by predators evolutionarily curtailing the conspicuousness of a sexually selected trait, or acting in opposition to another natural selection pressure, for instance, a different predator with a divergent hunting strategy. Some moon moths (Saturniidae) have long hindwing tails that thwart echolocating bat attacks at night, allowing the moth to escape. These long tails may come at a cost, however, if they make the moth's roosting form more conspicuous to visually foraging predators during the day. To test this potential trade-off, we offered wild-caught Carolina wrens (Thryothorus ludovicianus) pastry dough models with real Actias luna wings that were either intact or had tails experimentally removed. We video recorded wrens foraging on models and found that moth models with tails did not experience increased detection and attack by birds. Thus, this elaborate trait, while obvious to human observers, does not seem to come at a cost of increased avian predator attention. The evolution of long hindwing tails, likely driven by echolocating predators at night, does not seem to be limited by opposing diurnal constraints. This study demonstrates the importance of testing presumed trade-offs and provides hypotheses for future testing. The Royal Society 2023-02-01 /pmc/articles/PMC9890116/ /pubmed/36722145 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2022.0428 Text en © 2023 The Authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Animal Behaviour
Rubin, Juliette J.
Martin, Nich W.
Sieving, Kathryn E.
Kawahara, Akito Y.
Testing bird-driven diurnal trade-offs of the moon moth's anti-bat tail
title Testing bird-driven diurnal trade-offs of the moon moth's anti-bat tail
title_full Testing bird-driven diurnal trade-offs of the moon moth's anti-bat tail
title_fullStr Testing bird-driven diurnal trade-offs of the moon moth's anti-bat tail
title_full_unstemmed Testing bird-driven diurnal trade-offs of the moon moth's anti-bat tail
title_short Testing bird-driven diurnal trade-offs of the moon moth's anti-bat tail
title_sort testing bird-driven diurnal trade-offs of the moon moth's anti-bat tail
topic Animal Behaviour
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9890116/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36722145
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2022.0428
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