Fast and furious: effects of body size on strike performance in an arboreal viperTrimeresurus(Cryptelytrops)albolabris

Herrel, Anthony; Huyghe, Katleen; Oković, Patricija; Lisičić, Duje; Tadić, Zoran

doi:10.1002/jez.645

Cited by 34 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…¼ 348 + 71 g, snout -vent length ¼ 91 + 5.6 cm), 6 western cottonmouth vipers (Agkistrodon piscivorus; 273 + 15.8 g, 68 + 2.4 cm), 12 western diamond-backed rattlesnakes (Crotalus atrox; 634 + 38 g, 95 + 2.0 cm) and previously published studies [2,4,10,11]. We discuss the accelerations of snake strikes in relation to the known physiological effects experienced during high accelerations, and we compare strike durations with mammalian startle-response times.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 74%

Debunking the viper's strike: harmless snakes kill a common assumption

Penning¹,

Sawvel²,

Moon³

2016

Biol. Lett.

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To survive, organisms must avoid predation and acquire nutrients and energy. Sensory systems must correctly differentiate between potential predators and prey, and elicit behaviours that adjust distances accordingly. For snakes, strikes can serve both purposes. Vipers are thought to have the fastest strikes among snakes. However, strike performance has been measured in very few species, especially non-vipers. We measured defensive strike performance in harmless Texas ratsnakes and two species of vipers, western cottonmouths and western diamond-backed rattlesnakes, using high-speed video recordings. We show that ratsnake strike performance matches or exceeds that of vipers. In contrast with the literature over the past century, vipers do not represent the pinnacle of strike performance in snakes. Both harmless and venomous snakes can strike with very high accelerations that have two key consequences: the accelerations exceed values that can cause loss of consciousness in other animals, such as the accelerations experienced by jet pilots during extreme manoeuvres, and they make the strikes faster than the sensory and motor responses of mammalian prey and predators. Both harmless and venomous snakes can strike faster than the blink of an eye and often reach a target before it can move.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 74%

Debunking the viper's strike: harmless snakes kill a common assumption

Penning¹,

Sawvel²,

Moon³

2016

Biol. Lett.

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“…In terrestrial tetrapods, although fewer data are available, locomotor-feeding integration has been demonstrated in snakes (e.g. Frazzetta, 1966;Janoo and Gasc, 1992;Kardong and Bels, 1998;Cundall and Deufel, 1999;Alfaro, 2003;Young, 2010;Herrel et al, 2011) and lizards (Montuelle et al, 2009a;Montuelle et al, 2012). Interestingly, in one omnivorous lizard, Gerrhosaurus major, both feeding and locomotor movements are observed to be flexible in response to prey size and mobility (Montuelle et al, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flexibility in locomotor-feeding integration during prey capture in varanid lizards: effects of prey size and velocity

Montuelle

Herrel

Libourel

et al. 2012

Journal of Experimental Biology

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SUMMARYFeeding movements are adjusted in response to food properties, and this flexibility is essential for omnivorous predators as food properties vary routinely. In most lizards, prey capture is no longer considered to solely rely on the movements of the feeding structures (jaws, hyolingual apparatus) but instead is understood to require the integration of the feeding system with the locomotor system (i.e. coordination of movements). Here, we investigated flexibility in the coordination pattern between jaw, neck and forelimb movements in omnivorous varanid lizards feeding on four prey types varying in length and mobility: grasshoppers, live newborn mice, adult mice and dead adult mice. We tested for bivariate correlations between 3D locomotor and feeding kinematics, and compared the jaw-neck-forelimb coordination patterns across prey types. Our results reveal that locomotor-feeding integration is essential for the capture of evasive prey, and that different jaw-neck-forelimb coordination patterns are used to capture different prey types. Jaw-neck-forelimb coordination is indeed significantly altered by the length and speed of the prey, indicating that a similar coordination pattern can be finely tuned in response to prey stimuli. These results suggest feed-forward as well as feed-back modulation of the control of locomotor-feeding integration. As varanids are considered to be specialized in the capture of evasive prey (although they retain their ability to feed on a wide variety of prey items), flexibility in locomotor-feeding integration in response to prey mobility is proposed to be a key component in their dietary specialization.

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“…We chose our overall sample sizes based on available specimens and previously published work for both morphological (Jayne and Riley, 2007;Herrel et al, 2011) and performance investigations (Moon and Mehta, 2007;Penning et al, 2015;Penning and Dartez, 2016). For each experiment below, we provide the sample size for that specific experiment.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We measured the muscle CSA of five epaxial muscles (semispinalis-spinalis complex, multifidis, longissimus dorsi and iliocostalis; Fig. 1) in each section of the body (following Jayne and Riley, 2007;Herrel et al, 2011) using ImageJ software (NIH; https:// imagej.nih.gov/ij/) (following Herrel et al, 2011). We chose this method of measuring muscle CSA to follow previous methods (Lourdais et al, 2005;Jayne and Riley, 2007;Herrel et al, 2011) and because a simple measure of external body width (a dimension of length) would represent only half of the possible variation in muscle cross-sectional area (length 2 ); furthermore, previous work has shown that although linear measures are significantly related to muscle crosssectional areas, they miss a considerable portion of the variation in muscle cross-sectional area (Lourdais et al, 2005, found that R 2 =0.73 for this relationship).…”

Section: Morphology and Scalingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To evaluate pulling force, we used OLS multiple regression with pulling force as the dependent variable, snake species as a categorical variable, and snake body mass as the independent variable. Following previous methods (Herrel et al, 2011;Penning, 2016) and the general recommendations for regression analyses based on regression-line symmetry (Smith, 2009), we used RMA regression for comparisons between two morphological variables and OLS regression for comparisons between one morphological and one performance variable. We retained all data in all models because the results were the same with all data retained and with outliers removed.…”

Section: Statistical Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The king of snakes: performance and morphology of intraguild predators (Lampropeltis) and their prey (Pantherophis)

Penning

Moon

2017

Journal of Experimental Biology

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Across ecosystems and trophic levels, predators are usually larger than their prey, and when trophic morphology converges, predators typically avoid predation on intraguild competitors unless the prey is notably smaller in size. However, a currently unexplained exception occurs in kingsnakes in the genus Lampropeltis. Kingsnakes are able to capture, constrict and consume other snakes that are not only larger than themselves but that are also powerful constrictors (such as ratsnakes in the genus Pantherophis). Their mechanisms of success as intraguild predators on other constrictors remain unknown. To begin addressing these mechanisms, we studied the scaling of muscle cross-sectional area, pulling force and constriction pressure across the ontogeny of six species of snakes (Lampropeltis californiae, L. getula, L. holbrooki, Pantherophis alleghaniensis, P. guttatus and P. obsoletus). Muscle cross-sectional area is an indicator of potential force production, pulling force is an indicator of escape performance, and constriction pressure is a measure of prey-handling performance. Muscle cross-sectional area scaled similarly for all snakes, and there was no significant difference in maximum pulling force among species. However, kingsnakes exerted significantly higher pressures on their prey than ratsnakes. The similar escape performance among species indicates that kingsnakes win in predatory encounters because of their superior constriction performance, not because ratsnakes have inferior escape performance. The superior constriction performance by kingsnakes results from their consistent and distinctive coil posture and perhaps from additional aspects of muscle structure and function that need to be tested in future research.

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Fast and furious: effects of body size on strike performance in an arboreal viperTrimeresurus(Cryptelytrops)albolabris

Cited by 34 publications

References 30 publications

Debunking the viper's strike: harmless snakes kill a common assumption

Debunking the viper's strike: harmless snakes kill a common assumption

Flexibility in locomotor-feeding integration during prey capture in varanid lizards: effects of prey size and velocity

The king of snakes: performance and morphology of intraguild predators (Lampropeltis) and their prey (Pantherophis)

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