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Abstract
Predator-prey encounters are one of the most challenging behaviors that animals engage in and play a key role in structuring trophic linkages within food webs. Empirical studies suggest that predators (except pathogens, parasites, and parasitoids) tend to be larger in body size and have better dispersal ability than their prey items; however, when predators prey upon members of the same taxonomic group, it is unclear whether such relationships exist between predators and their prey items since both groups may have similar body sizes and dispersal abilities. Adult odonates can be used to test this as they prey upon other odonates within the same suborder, family, genus or species, although such records are uncommon. Using a dataset collected from Sri Lanka and India from 2012 to 2020, this study identified three types of predation behaviors between two suborders of Odonata, i.e., (i) Anisoptera (dragonflies) prey upon Anisoptera, (ii) Anisoptera prey upon Zygoptera (damselflies), and (iii) Zygoptera prey upon Zygoptera. There was no evidence of Anisoptera predation by Zygoptera. Study results showed strong evidence that there is a significant difference in body size (i.e., body length) and dispersal ability (i.e., hind-wing length) between adult predatory odonates and adult prey odonates for all three types of predations. This may indicate that predatory odonates estimate other odonate prey precisely to proceed with a successful attack.
Highlights
Do predatory adult odonates estimate their adult prey odonates’ body size and dispersal ability to proceed with a successful attack?
The average body size and dispersal ability of a species significantly depends on its taxonomic order (Siemann et al 1999)
When predators prey upon members of the same taxonomic group, it is difficult to predict whether the predators still estimate the size and dispersal ability of their potential prey items to proceed with a successful attack (Woodward & Hildrew 2002)
Summary
The Journal of Threatened Taxa (JoTT) is dedicated to building evidence for conservation globally by publishing peer-reviewed articles online every month at a reasonably rapid rate at www.threatenedtaxa.org. All articles published in JoTT are registered under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License unless otherwise mentioned.
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