Testing for mimicry—An evolutionary biologist’s wish list

Gaskett, Anne C.

doi:10.1111/1365-2435.13398

Functional Ecology

2019

DOI: 10.1111/1365-2435.13398

|View full text |Cite

Testing for mimicry—An evolutionary biologist’s wish list

Anne C. Gaskett

Help me understand this report

Search citation statements

Order By: Relevance

Paper Sections

Select...

Citation Types

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Year Published

2020

Publication Types

Select...

Article1

Relationship

Self Cite0

Independent1

Authors

Journals

Cited by 1 publication

References 25 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

Spider lures exploit insect preferences for floral colour and symmetry

White

Kemp

2020

Evol Ecol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Sensory systems can capture only a fraction of available information, which creates opportunities for deceptive signalling. The sensory traps and sensory bias models have proven valuable for explaining how visual systems and environments shape the design of sexual signals, but their application to deceptive signals is largely untapped. Here we use the 'jewelled' orb-web spider Gasteracantha fornicata to experimentally test two longstanding hypotheses for the function of deceptive visual lures. Namely, that they: (1) exploit generalised preferences for conspicuous colouration (sensory bias), or (2) co-opt the otherwise-adaptive foraging response of prey toward flowers (sensory traps). In a field-based study we manipulated the conspicuous dorsal signal of female spiders along two axes --colour pattern and symmetry -to generate a gradient of floral resemblance, and monitored the per-individual consequences for prey interception. As predicted by the traps model, the most attractive phenotypes were those with flower-like radial symmetry and solid colour patterns, and their attractiveness equaled that of wild-type models. These results demonstrate that deceptive orb-web spider lures function, in part, as inter-kingdom sensory traps via floral mimicry, and support the broader extension of sensory-based models to deceptive signalling contexts.

show abstract

Spider lures exploit insect preferences for floral colour and symmetry

White

Kemp

2020

Evol Ecol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.

Contact Info

customersupport@researchsolutions.com

10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614

Henderson, NV 89052, USA

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Blog Terms and Conditions API Terms Privacy Policy Contact Cookie Preferences Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information

Made with 💙 for researchers

Part of the Research Solutions Family.

Testing for mimicry—An evolutionary biologist’s wish list

Cited by 1 publication

References 25 publications

Spider lures exploit insect preferences for floral colour and symmetry

Spider lures exploit insect preferences for floral colour and symmetry

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About