Evidence for Apostatic Selection by Wild Passerines

Allen, J. A.; Clarke, Bryan

doi:10.1038/220501a0

Cited by 142 publications

(107 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Experiments in which wild birds were offered green and brown baits in different proportions gave evidence that the relative predation did indeed vary in this way (Allen and Clarke, 1968). Recent work by Arnold (unpublished) has demonstrated a similar result when wild thrushes were offered two morphs of Cepaea nemoralis at different frequencies against uniform backgrounds of leaf-litter in beechwoods.…”

Section: The General Evidencementioning

confidence: 88%

“…What was lacking, however, at the time of this review was a clear demonstration (i) that avian predators were capable of forming searching images for the colour of their prey, and (ii) that wild birds could exert effective apostatic selection. These gaps have now been filled by the work of Croze (personal communication) on crows and by Allen (personal communication) and Allen and Clarke (1968) The work of Allen and Clarke (1968) is appropriate to this discussion. They offered artificial dimorphic prey (made of flour and lard, and coloured green or brown) to wild birds against uniform backgrounds of green grass or brown soil.…”

Section: The General Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

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The evidence for apostatic selection

Clarke

1969

Heredity

Self Cite

141

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Section: The General Evidencementioning

confidence: 88%

Section: The General Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

The evidence for apostatic selection

Clarke

1969

Heredity

Self Cite

141

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“…Secondly, differences in the relative proportions of snail-eating birds and mammals will result in differences in proportions taken. Thirdly, Allen and Clarke (1968) have shown that birds have colour preferences, and search images become superimposed upon these. Separate birds will have different preferences and images, resulting in variations in the proportion of yellows taken in separate localities.…”

Section: Correlation With Background (A) Distribution Oj'yellowmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visual selection in the land snail Arianta arbustorum

Parkin

1971

Heredity

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“…It is not surprising, therefore, that the source of the selective bias is often difficult to adduce. Those studies that entail the deliberate introduction of a bias via pretraining on one stimulus type (Allen & Clarke, 1968) or that entail the first exposure to novel, conspicuous stimuli (Fullick & Greenwood, 1979;Willis, McEwan, Greenwood, & Elton, 1980) are probably most parsimoniously interpreted as elicitations of response biases. Other studies may be consistent with a perceptual bias, but because stimulus discriminability was not explicitly manipulated, the design cannot fully exclude alternative inferences (Allen, 1972;Cook & Miller, 1977;Manly, Miller, & Cook, 1972).…”

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confidence: 99%

Visual search and selection of natural stimuli in the pigeon: The attention threshold hypothesis.

Bond

1983

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes

148

221

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During visual search for samples of varying proportions of familiar, natural food grains displayed against a complex gravel background, pigeons exhibited "matching selection," a tendency to overselect the more common grain. The matchingselection effect was decreased at low levels of stimulus/background contrast and reversed when the grains were highly conspicuous. The results were consistent with the hypothesis that stimulus detectability should be enhanced by recent experience with a particular grain type, but they showed no convincing indications of a corresponding effect on the response criterion. An explanatory model, termed the attention threshold hypothesis, argues that the mean latency of discovery can be minimized by selectively attending to one stimulus type at a time and switching to a more generally receptive state when the rate of discovery falls below a threshold value. The model appears to account for the fact that the response rate was highest toward samples containing a single grain type and decreased as the relative proportions approached equality. Additional consequences of the adoption of this theoretical perspective were explored in some detail. Among other results, the evidence suggests that the switching threshold might be chosen so as to optimize the rate of food discovery.Animals that are ecological generalists, that is, apimals that forage for a variety of food, commonly exhibit a selection bias that depends on relative frequency (Curio, 1976;Krebs, 1973). Food types uncommon in the environment tend to be disproportionately underrepresented in the diet, whereas more abundant foods are consumed in excess. A selection bias could result from a number of passive factors, such as heterogeneity in the spatial distribution of food types or changes in food accessibility with density (Murdoch & Oaten, 1974). In animals that conduct a visual search for food, however, Tinbergen (1960) hypothesized that the bias may be attributable to active processes. Recent expe-I wish to thank D.

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Evidence for Apostatic Selection by Wild Passerines

Cited by 142 publications

References 4 publications

The evidence for apostatic selection

The evidence for apostatic selection

Visual selection in the land snail Arianta arbustorum

Visual search and selection of natural stimuli in the pigeon: The attention threshold hypothesis.

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