Re: Animals that are poisonous to ingestion Social Behavior
- From: William Morse <wdmorse@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2006 17:24:34 -0400 (EDT)
drosen0000@xxxxxxxxx wrote in news:eduu9o$1jaf$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:
What finess value does being poisonous upon ingestion have to
animal prey? I am not talking about poison that is actually applied to
the predator by the prey biting, but to the passive ingestion of
posion.
There does not seem to be any advantage unless there is a
correlated social behaviour involoved. Once eaten, the prey is dead and
can't produce descendents anyway. If the predator dies, it does not
bring the eaten prey individual back to life. If the predator's species
dies, it still doesn't help the descendents of that prey animal since
there are none. If the prey animal species is not social, the
nonvenomous individuals are protected just as much by the death of the
predator as the venomous individuals. The venomous individuals have to
pay a metabolic penalty for producing the venom.
Some social behaviors that would make being poisonous to ingestion
a benefit to other members of the prey's family (e.g., selfish gene
scenarios). However, I never heard of a correlation between social
behavior and being poisonous. Do venomous animals tend to be social?
Does anyone know if poisonous frogs stick together in family groups?
I have replied to this rather than separately to your other question, as
I think the two are related.
One possible explanation for the advantages of warning coloration is in
fact kin selection (a selfish gene scenario, if you will). But I don't
think the poisonous animals have to be deliberately social for this to
work - they merely have to not disperse too widely from their place of
birth, and this is not unusual.
You do raise an interesting point about the metabolic penalty. It seems
that very many of the poisonous animals with warning coloration
(aposematism) do not in fact produce the poison themselves - what they do
is eat things that contain poison. Probably they evolved to do so as that
was an available niche, or there was an arms race (as with garter snakes
and newts). In either case the result is that they are already poisonous.
In that case, the question is does it pay to advertise the fact that one
is poisonous?
As noted above, kin selection is one way in which it might pay to
advertise. A scenario in which some attacks by a predator result in
ingestion of part of the prey but do not kill the prey could also result
in a positive payback from aposematism even before it is widely
established in a species.
Yours,
Bill Morse
.
- References:
- Animals that are poisonous to ingestion Social Behavior
- From: drosen0000
- Animals that are poisonous to ingestion Social Behavior
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