Immobile defence of a frog distracts attention of approaching predators to other prey
In: BehaviourSearch for other papers by Nozomi Nishiumi in
Current site
Google Scholar
Search for other papers by Akira Mori in
Current site
Google Scholar
Escape theories predict that animals remaining motionless after being detected by a predator are less successful in predation avoidance because it simply allows the predator to come closer. Nonetheless, even in such a situation, some animals often remain motionless for a while before escaping. We hypothesized that this non-immediate escape response increases the survivorship of the prey by distracting the predator’s attention to another nearby prey that indifferently comes into the visual field of the predator that is carefully and inconspicuously approaching the former prey. Staged encounter experiments using frogs and snakes as prey and predator, respectively, yielded the results that support this hypothesis. Considering the density of frogs in the field, this phenomenon is feasible under natural conditions. Therefore, remaining motionless after being detected by predator could be an effective choice for prey to avoid predation under a certain condition.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Beauchamp G. (2007). Vigilance in a selfish herd. — Anim. Behav. 73: 445-451.
-
Bednekoff P.A., Lima S.L. (1998). Re-examining safety in numbers: interactions between risk dilution and collective detection depend upon predator targeting behaviour. — Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B: Biol. Sci. 265: 2021-2026.
-
Brodie E.D., Johnson J.A., Dodd C.K. (1974). Immobility as a defensive behavior in salamanders. — Herpetologica 30: 79-85.
-
Broom M., Ruxton G.D. (2005). You can run — or you can hide: optimal strategies for cryptic prey against pursuit predators. — Behav. Ecol. 16: 534-540.
-
Chelini M.C., Willemart R.H., Hebets E.A. (2009). Costs and benefits of freezing behaviour in the harvestman Eumesosoma roeweri (Arachnida, Opiliones). — Behav. Process. 82: 153-159.
-
Cushman K.A., Pearl C.A. (2007). A conservation assessment of the Oregon Spotted Frog. — USDA Forest Service Region 6, USDI Bureau of Land Management Oregon and Washington Final Report. Available online at http://fresc.usgs.gov/products/papers/1578_Pearl.pdf.
-
Dawkins R., Krebs J.R. (1979). Arms races between and within species. — Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B: Biol. Sci. 205: 489-511.
-
Edmunds M. (1974). Defence in animals: a survey of anti-predator defences. — Longman, Harlow.
-
Endler J.A. (1991). Interactions between predators and prey. — In: Behavioural ecology: an evolutionary approach ( Krebs J.R., Davies N.B., eds). Blackwell, Oxford, p. 169-196.
-
Fanselow M.S., Lester L.S. (1988). A functional behavioristic approach to aversively motivated behavior: predatory imminence as a determinant of the topography of defensive behavior. — In: Evolution and learning ( Bolles R.C., Beecher M.D., eds). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ, p. 185-212.
-
Fernández-Juricic E., Delgado J.A., Remacha C., Jiménez M.D., Garcia V., Hori K. (2009). Can a solitary avian species use collective detection? An assay in semi-natural conditions. — Behav. Process. 82: 67-74.
-
Fukada H. (1960). Biological studies on the snakes. VII. Growth and maturity of Elaphe quadrivirgata (Boie). — Bull. Kyoto Gakugei Univ. B 16: 6-21.
-
Gerald G.W. (2008). Feign versus flight: influences of temperature, body size and locomotor abilities on death feigning in neonate snakes. — Anim. Behav. 75: 647-654.
-
Goris R.C., Maeda N. (2004). Guide to the amphibians and reptiles of Japan. — Krieger, Malabar, FL.
-
Hamilton W.D. (1971). Geometry for the selfish herd. — J. Theor. Biol. 31: 295-311.
-
Hayes F.E. (1990). Comparative escape behavior of adult green frogs (Rana clamitans) and northern leopard frogs (R. pipiens). — Bull. Md. Herpetol. Soc. 26: 81-99.
-
Hedrick A. (2013). Family effects on antipredator behavior in the field cricket, Gryllus Integer. — J. Insect Behav. 26: 832-836.
-
Jackson R.R., Pollard S.D. (1996). Predatory behavior of jumping spiders. — Annu. Rev. Entomol. 41: 287-308.
-
Kadowaki S. (1996). Ecology of a Japanese snake community — resource use patterns of the three sympatric snakes Rhabdophis tigrinus, Elaphe quadrivirgata and Agkistrodon b. blomhoffii. — Bull. Tsukuba Univ. Forests 12: 77-148 (in Japanese).
-
Kardong K.V., Bels V.L. (1998). Rattlesnake strike behavior: kinematics. — J. Exp. Biol. 201: 837-850.
-
Lagos A., Ebensperger L.A., Herberstein M.E. (2014). A quantitative test of the ‘economic’ and ‘optimal’ models of escape behaviour. — Anim. Behav. 97: 221-227.
-
Lettvin J.Y., Maturana H.R., Pitts W.H., McCulloch W.S. (1961). Two remarks on the visual system of the frogs. — In: Sensory communication ( Rosenblith W.A., ed.). MIT Press and Wiley, New York, NY, p. 757-776.
-
Licht L.E. (1986). Comparative escape behavior of sympatric Rana aurora and Rana pretiosa. — Am. Midl. Nat. 115: 239-247.
-
Lima S.L. (1995). Collective detection of predatory attack by social foragers: fraught with ambiguity? — Anim. Behav. 50: 1097-1108.
-
Maeda N., Matsui M. (1999). Frogs and toads of Japan, Revised edn. — Bun-ichi Sogo Shuppan, Tokyo (in Japanese).
-
Marchisin A., Anderson J.D. (1978). Strategies employed by frogs and toads (Amphibia, Anura) to avoid predation by snakes (Reptilia, Serpentes). — J. Herpetol. 12: 151-155.
-
Martin J., Luque-Larena J.J., Lopez P. (2006). Collective detection in escape responses of temporary groups of Iberian green frogs. — Behav. Ecol. 17: 222-226.
-
Miyatake T., Katayama K., Takeda Y., Nakashima A., Sugita A., Mizumoto M. (2004). Is death-feigning adaptive? Heritable variation in fitness difference of death-feigning behaviour. — Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B: Biol. Sci. 271: 2293-2296.
-
Miyatake T., Tabuchi K., Sasaki K., Okada K., Katayama K., Moriya S. (2008). Pleiotropic antipredator strategies, fleeing and feigning death, correlated with dopamine levels in Tribolium castaneum. — Anim. Behav. 75: 113-121.
-
Miyatake T., Nakayama S., Nishi Y., Nakajima S. (2009). Tonically immobilized selfish prey can survive by sacrificing others. — Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B: Biol. Sci. 276: 2763-2767.
-
Mori A. (1991). Spontaneous immobility of the Japanese lacertid lizard, Takydromus tachydromoides. — Jpn. J. Herpetol. 14: 1-5.
-
Mori A., Moriguchi H. (1988). Food habits of the snakes in Japan: a critical review. — Snake 20: 98-113.
-
Nishiumi N., Mori A. (2015). Distance-dependent switching of anti-predator behavior of frogs from immobility to fleeing. — J. Ethol. 33: 117-124.
-
Ota H. (1986). Snake really an able hunter?: predatory behavior of Japanese striped snake, Elaphe quadrivirgata, in the field. — J. Ethol. 4: 69-71.
-
Pays O., Beauchamp G., Carter A.J., Goldizen A.W. (2013). Foraging in groups allows collective predator detection in a mammal species without alarm calls. — Behav. Ecol. 24: 1229-1236.
-
Ruxton G.D., Sherratt T.N., Speed M.P. (2004). Avoiding attack: the evolutionary ecology of crypsis, warning signals, and mimicry. — Oxford University Press, Oxford.
-
Shinoda N. (1984). Frogs of the Rana nigromaculata group from Iwate Prefecture: their distribution and variation in external characters. — Jpn. J. Herpetol. 10: 97-103 (in Japanese).
-
Shinohara N. (2007). The effect of the new-style of rice paddies on the distribution in Rana nigromaculata, Kagawa Prefecture, Japan. — Kagawa Seibutsu 34: 97-105 (in Japanese).
-
Smith B.E. (2003). Conservation assessment for the Northern Leopard Frog in the Black Hills National Forest, South Dakota and Wyoming. — USDA Forest Service, Black Hills National Forest, Custer, SD, available online at http://fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fsm9_012268.pdf.
-
Suarez S.D., Gallup G.G. (1981). An ethological analysis of open-field testing in rats and mice. — Learn. Motiv. 12: 342-363.
-
Tidwell K.S., Hayes M.P. (2013). Difference in flight initiation distance between recently metamorphosed Oregon spotted frogs (Rana pretiosa) and American bullfrogs (Lithobates catesbeianus). — Herpetol. Conserv. Biol. 8: 426-434.
-
Toledo L.F., Sazima I., Haddad C.F.B. (2011). Behavioural defences of anurans: an overview. — Ethol. Ecol. Evol. 23: 1-25.
-
Van Valkenburgh B. (1985). Locomotor diversity within past and present guilds of large predatory mammals. — Paleobiology 11: 406-428.
-
Wells K.D. (2007). The ecology and behavior of amphibians. — The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
-
Zhang H., Yan J., Zhang G., Zhou K. (2008). Phylogeography and demographic history of Chinese black-spotted frog populations (Pelophylax nigromaculata): evidence for independent refugia expansion and secondary contact. — BMC Evol. Biol. 8: 21-36.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 768 | 141 | 19 |
| Full Text Views | 246 | 11 | 2 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 88 | 9 | 5 |
Immobile defence of a frog distracts attention of approaching predators to other prey
In: BehaviourSearch for other papers by Nozomi Nishiumi in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Search for other papers by Akira Mori in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Escape theories predict that animals remaining motionless after being detected by a predator are less successful in predation avoidance because it simply allows the predator to come closer. Nonetheless, even in such a situation, some animals often remain motionless for a while before escaping. We hypothesized that this non-immediate escape response increases the survivorship of the prey by distracting the predator’s attention to another nearby prey that indifferently comes into the visual field of the predator that is carefully and inconspicuously approaching the former prey. Staged encounter experiments using frogs and snakes as prey and predator, respectively, yielded the results that support this hypothesis. Considering the density of frogs in the field, this phenomenon is feasible under natural conditions. Therefore, remaining motionless after being detected by predator could be an effective choice for prey to avoid predation under a certain condition.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 768 | 141 | 19 |
| Full Text Views | 246 | 11 | 2 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 88 | 9 | 5 |
