Importance of colour in the reaction of passerine predators to aposematic prey: experiments with mutants of Pyrrhocoris apterus (Heteroptera) |
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Authors: | ALICE EXNEROVÁ ,KATE INA SVÁ DOVÁ ,PAVEL TYS,SILVIE BARCALOVÁ ,EVA LANDOVÁ ,MILENA PROKOPOVÁ ,ROMAN FUCHS, RADOMÍ R SOCHA |
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Affiliation: | Department of Zoology, Charles University, Viničná7, CZ 128 44, Prague, Czech Republic; Department of Zoology, University of South Bohemia, Branišovská31, ČeskéBudějovice, Czech Republic; Institute of Entomology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Branišovská31, ČeskéBudějovice, Czech Republic |
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Abstract: | Persistent questions concerning the warning coloration of unpalatable insects address whether the bright aposematic colour itself or its combination with a species-specific dark pattern is the key factor in their protection against insectivorous birds, and how chromatic polymorphism originates and is maintained in aposematics. In the present study, these questions were tested experimentally, using the birds Parus major , Parus caeruleus , Erithacus rubecula , and Sylvia atricapilla as predators, and chromatically polymorphic firebug Pyrrhocoris apterus : red wild form, white, yellow, and orange mutants (all four of them with the same black melanin pattern, the mutants differing in colour of pteridine pigments only) and the nonaposematic brown-painted wild form as prey. The results show that a specific colour is essential for the birds to recognize the specific aposematic prey; the melanin pattern is not sufficient. White mutants were no better protected than nonaposematic firebugs; red wild-type and orange mutants were equally well protected against all bird species; and the reaction of birds to yellow mutants was species-specific. An evolutionary scenario of 'recurrent recessive mutations' is formulated to explain the origin of colour polymorphism in some aposematics. © 2006 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society , 2006, 88 , 143–153. |
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Keywords: | antipredator defence colour polymorphism erythropterin biosynthesis insectivorous birds melanin pattern Pyrrhocoridae recurrent mutations warning coloration |
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