Abstract
Introduction:Prey escape reaction in insects is an antipredatory adaptation that is mediated by prey neural escape circuits with specific sensory properties.Methods:Certain insectivorous birds, flush-pursuers, exploit this visual sensitivity by employing conspicuous pivoting movements of spread tail and wings to flush the prey into the air where it is available for chase in aerial pursuits. Although it is known that this strategy increases the number of insects attacked, no information has been published on the size distribution of arthropods attacked using flush-pursue strategyvs. traditional gleaning and pecking off substrate strategy.Results:Based on one season of observational data of foraging redstarts (Myioborus pictus) we show that prey items that were flushed and chased were on average larger than prey pecked off of substrates.Conclusion:This may be one of the benefits from flush-pursue foraging – a strategy that is probably costly in terms of energy demands.
Highlights
Prey escape reaction in insects is an antipredatory adaptation that is mediated by prey neural escape circuits with specific sensory properties
Some species of insectivorous birds, the flush-pursuers [1], use conspicuous pivoting movements of spread tail and wings to exploit prey antipredatory escape reactions [2, 3]. These birds make a cryptic prey item conspicuous by flushing it into the air where it can be captured following an aerial pursuit, and by using this foraging method they increase the number of prey items delivered to their nestlings [4 - 14]
The size rank of prey chased in air (mean, [median,]; 2.6 [3] (1-5), n=32) was larger (Mann Whitney test; Z1=2.68, P=0.008) than the size rank of prey pecked off the substrate (1.8) [1] (1-5),(n=52), and the two prey size distributions differed between each other (Fig. 1); (G4 = 25.71), (P=0.00008)
Summary
Prey escape reaction in insects is an antipredatory adaptation that is mediated by prey neural escape circuits with specific sensory properties. Some species of insectivorous birds, the flush-pursuers (sensu) [1], use conspicuous pivoting movements of spread tail and wings to exploit prey antipredatory escape reactions [2, 3]. These birds make a cryptic prey item conspicuous by flushing it into the air where it can be captured following an aerial pursuit, and by using this foraging method they increase the number of prey items delivered to their nestlings [4 - 14]. The painted redstart (Myioborus pictus) is one of such flush-pursuing species and it uses the conspicuous wing and tail displays during foraging [8, 15 - 17]. The answer will expand our knowledge about predator-prey interactions in the systems with flush-pursue predators
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