From so simple a beginning

Evolution and Biodiversity

Page 7 of 21

Successful as bird dropping

24 August 2021 /

Crab spider imitates fresh bird’s poo

bird-dung crab spider mimics bird's poo

It looks like bird dropping, it smells like bird dropping. But it is the bird-dung crab spider Phrynarachne ceylonica, waiting until an unsuspecting fly comes close, as Long Yu and colleagues show.

Crab spiders get their meals by sitting motionless and waiting for a prey to come within range. Then they may strike suddenly. It helps if they don’t look like a spider while they sit-and-wait, but are disguised. The bird-dung crab spider Phrynarachne ceylonica, for example, successfully mimics a moist bird’s dropping, Long Yu and colleagues write.

The spider not only looks like bird poo, but it also smells like it. It was already known to mislead its predators, such as larger jumping spiders, which simply don’t recognize it.

The spiders occurs in Sri Lanka, China, Japan, and Taiwan.

Leaf miner flies

Now this masquerade proves doubly useful. The sneaky spider attracts tasty insects, mainly leaf miner flies (agromyzids), as Yu notes after observing several juvenile and female crab spiders in the field. The larvae of these flies feed on plant tissue, but adults have a different diet, and to them, fresh bird droppings are a favourite source of nutrients.

Yu painted several spiders entirely white or black, and these painted spiders did not attract the flies.

As he shows, the bird-dung crab spider Phrynarachne ceylonica has the same colours as fresh bird droppings to the eyes of insects. Spinning some threads, the spider mimics a dehydrated edge. And it works out well: insects land right next to the spider. The spider attracts prey at a lower rate than a real bird’s dropping, but that isn’t much of a problem if it is satiated after only one meal.

Unfortunately, the researchers do not report whether the crab spiders do indeed capture and consume the leaf miner flies.

Willy van Strien

Photo: LiCheng Shih (Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC BY 2.0)

Another crab spider mimics a flower

Source:
Yu, L., X. Xu, Z. Zhang, C.J. Painting, X. Yang & D. Li, 2021. Masquerading predators deceive prey by aggressively mimicking bird droppings in a crab spider. Current Zoology, online July 24. Doi: 10.1093/cz/zoab060

Eyeshadow

18 June 2021 /

In bright sunlight, a peregrine falcon can see well thank to malar stripes

Peregrine falcon can see well in bright sunlight thanks to dark malar stripes

Solar glare can impede vision. Michelle Vrettos and colleagues make it plausible that the black malar stripes of a peregrine falcon are helpful during hunt.

With an impressive high-speed dive, a hunting peregrine falcon descends to capture a prey in mid-air. It is the fastest flier among the birds – it can reach about 350 kilometres per hour in a hunting stoop – and it hunts other birds and bats while flying. Its striking black stripes below the eyes help it to track its fast-moving, agile prey, Michelle Vrettos and colleagues write.

Glare

The idea that those black stripes, the so-called malar stripes, are important for sharp vision already existed. Light feathers would reflect sunlight from the cheeks into the eyes, blurring the image, but dark feathers absorb the light. As a consequence, a hunting peregrine falcon would suffer less from solar glare. Other falcon species and some songbirds and hunting mammals have similar dark stripes or an eye mask. And some American athletes blacken their cheeks with eye black to reduce glare and better track fast balls. Does it help?

Apparently, it does, at least in peregrine falcons. Vrettos used photos that were posted on internet of a few thousand peregrines from all over the world; except in Antarctica, the bird is found everywhere. She measured the malar stripes on each photo. And she found that the malar stripes are larger and darker as the average annual solar radiation in the area where a photo was taken is higher. Even though, in sunny areas, dark feathers have the disadvantage that they absorb heat.

Experiments are required to proof that the malar stripes really help vision by reducing solar glare. But the findings are at least striking.

Willy van Strien

Photo: A peregrine falcon with prominent malar stripes. Kevin Cole (Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC BY 2.0)

Source:
Vrettos, M., C. Reynolds & A. Amar, 2021. Malar stripe size and prominence in peregrine falcons vary positively with solar radiation: support for the solar glare hypothesis. Biology Letters 17: 20210116. Doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2021.0116

To hear a mockingbird

11 June 2021 /

Subtle transitions between adjacent song phrases

northern mockingbird composes its song carefully

The northern mockingbird has an extremely lengthy, variegated and complex song. Tina Roeske and colleagues explain why we like this song so much.

For minutes on end, the northern mockingbird, Mimus polyglottos, can sing its song. The song is well known in North America, where the songbird is common in gardens and parks. It makes phrases in which it repeats a syllable (consisting of one or a few sounds) several times, like the European song thrush does, and strings the phrases up to a varied and complex whole.

A beautiful musical whole, in our opinion. Tina Roeske and colleagues know why we enjoy it: the bird orders its phrases carefully.

Car alarm

A singing mockingbird has a repertoire of a few hundred phrase types. These include its own tunes, but it also mimics calls and songs of many other birds. In addition, it mimics sounds of other animals and it can even imitate unnatural sounds, such as a car alarm.

And yet, its singing is not a hodgepodge. The researchers – a neuroscientist, a biologist, and a music philosopher – show that adjacent phrases usually are selected in such a way that they have similar acoustic properties; they sound like repeats that are a bit transformed or morphed. The researchers distinguish four modes of morphing that we can clearly perceive.

Coherence

Two adjacent phrases often have the same pitch and rhythm but differ in timbre (tone quality). For example, the first phrase has clear tones, the next one has some noise in it.

In other cases, a phrase is a repeat of the previous one, but at a different pitch. Or it has a faster or slower pace. Sometimes a combination of morphing can be heard, for instance a phrase that is faster and higher in pitch than its predecessor. And sometimes, a contrasting element is inserted between two similar phrases.

Because successive phrases are usually acoustically related, transitions are subtle, making the song coherent. Composers use the same strategies to add variety to their music. They use instruments with different timbres (for instance flute and violin), repeat a motif at a different pitch (the well-known beginning of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony) or they change the tempo.

Both mockingbird males and females sing. But males sing more often and more exuberantly; they do it to enchant females. Undoubtedly, they are successful, but exactly what a mockingbird female appreciates in a male’s singing is not known.

Willy van Strien

Photo: AidenD (Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0)

Hear a mockingbird singing and learn how the researchers analyse the song

Another musician bird: pied butcherbird

Source:
Roeske, T.C., D. Rothenberg & D.E. Gammon, 2021. Mockingbird morphing music: structured transitions in a complex bird song. Frontiers in Psychology, online May 4. Doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.630115

Bubble on the head

3 June 2021 /

Water anole rebreathes exhaled air when submerged

Water anole re-uses exhaled air

Some Anolis lizard species can stay underwater for a while without drowning. Thanks to a layer of air around their water-repellent skin, they continue to breathe, Chris Boccia and colleagues write.

The water anole, Anolis aquaticus, is not a fast lizard. But it often manages to escape from a predator, such as a larger lizard, snake, or bird. In case of danger, it splashes into the water to be out of sight. Although it may reappear only after more than fifteen minutes, it does not suffer from breathlessness. That is because it makes good use of the air it has with it, Chris Boccia and colleagues show.

The water anole from Costa Rica is one of more than 400 Anolis lizard species which occur in tropical America. Some species, including this one, live close to water and often submerge. The researchers studied how these semi-aquatic species survive submersion and how they differ from species that always remain on dry land.

All Anolis species appear to have a water-repellent skin. If they get into the water, a thin layer of air forms between water and skin across the body surface. In other words, they do not get wet like other lizards. As a consequence, no air bubbles up to the water surface to escape when an anole exhales underwater, as in other animals. Instead, the exhaled air is incorporated into the air layer around the body. This is visible as an air bubble near the nostrils. In the water anole, that bubble appears on top of its snout.

Bubble

Semi-aquatic species like the water anole use that trapped air. They re-inhale it. And exhale, and inhale, five times at least.

How does that help?

Breathing is necessary to take up oxygen from the air into the blood and to get rid of carbon dioxide. That gas exchange occurs in the lungs. The carbon dioxide exhaled by a diving anole dissolves easily from the air bubble in the water. So, it gets rid of that waste gas.

Also, with each breath, it takes up oxygen from the air bubble, the researchers show: the oxygen content of the bubble slowly decreases. The oxygen supply may be partly replenished if the air that comes from the lungs where it lost oxygen mixes with air that did not pass through the lungs: the air layer around the skin and air from mouth, nose, and windpipe.

Patience

And the bubble might act like a gill; perhaps it absorbs oxygen from the water. That will not be enough for a long stay underwater. But it might extend the maximum dive time a bit. A possible indication for this supplemental oxygen is that the oxygen content of the air bubble decreases more and more slowly over time. But that may also be explained by a lowered metabolism underwater, and thus less oxygen consumption.

Terrestrial Anolis species occasionally reuse expired air when submerged, but they do not do so routinely and not for as long as the water anole and other semi-aquatic species – that have to sustain rebreathing until the predator’s patience is gone.

Willy van Strien

Photo: submerged water anole with bubble on snout. ©Lindsey Swierk

On You Tube, the researchers show it here and here

Source:
Boccia, C.K., L. Swierk, F.P. Ayala-Varela, J. Boccia, I.L. Borges, C.A. Estupiñán, A.M. Martin, R.E. Martínez-Grimaldo, S. Ovalle, S. Senthivasan, K.S. Toyama, M. del Rosario Castañeda, A. García, R.E. Glor & D.L. Mahler, 2021. Repeated evolution of underwater rebreathing in diving Anolis lizards. Current Biology, online May 12. Doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.04.040

Royal matchmaker

27 May 2021 /

Ant worker transports young queen to suitable mates

Cardiocondyla elegans worker carries queen to new nest to mate

Workers of the ant Cardiocondyla elegans make sure that their queen sisters will meet unrelated males, Mathilde Vidal and colleagues show.

Young queens of the ant Cardiocondyla elegans do not leave the natal nest on their own to be inseminated outside. Although they have wings, they make no nuptial flights like queens in many other species. They stay inside. Males have no wings, and they too remain in the natal nest. And so it happens that young queens, or gynes, mate with males that were born in the same nest. But workers intervene to promote outbreeding, Mathilde Vidal and colleagues discovered.

Cardiocondyla elegans, which is mainly found along the Mediterranean, contructs underground nests on river banks. Hundreds of workers, dozens of young queens and a few males share a nest, headed by one fertile queen. This mother queen has mated with several males and stored their sperm to fertilise eggs.

As a consequence, the gynes and males in her nest are full and half siblings. If they mate with each other, this is inbreeding, and prolonged inbreeding has negative effects on the lifespan of mother queens, the survival of brood and the ratio of females (workers and young queens) to males.

Vidal had observed workers walking through the field between nests, carrying a winged young queen on their back. She wondered whether this queen transport could be a way to promote outbreeding. Behavioral observations and genetic research confirmed this idea.

New contacts

The researchers discovered that gynes do indeed mate in the natal nest. But it doesn’t always stop there. A worker regularly drags a young queen out of the nest, takes her head between its jaws and carries her on its back to another nest, where it drops her into the nest entrance.

Just below that entrance, as it turned out, is a chamber with hundreds of young queens and males. It is obvious what is happening there. The nest chambers with mother queen and brood are much deeper, 1 to 2 meters below the surface. By dropping a young queen into the entrance of an alien nest, a worker brings her into contact with males that are not (half) brothers. The nest where a young queen is delivered also profits because males can mate not only with (half) sisters, but also with an unrelated queen.

After delivery, a queen is sometimes picked up again and taken to still another nest.

Hibernation

Young Cardiocondyla elegans queens hibernate in the natal nest or in the nest to which they were brought. They retain their wings. In spring they leave, usually on foot, to found a nest on their own, with a stored stock of sperm from several males: (half) brothers and, if they have been transported to another nest, alien males. Once they have started their own nest, they lose their wings.

Apparently, young queens are able to disperse on their own. Then why don’t they leave the natal nest to mate elsewhere?

Maybe it’s quicker and safer to be carried, Vidal thinks. Workers know the surroundings. Passing by other nests, they walk in a straight line to a nest that they have selected. Often, they will deliver another gyne there later on.

Inhabitants of a preferred nest are no family, so the matchmakers select unrelated partners for their queen sisters. This behaviour is a new and surprising way to promote outbreeding, the researchers state.

Willy van Strien

Photo: Cardiocondyla elegans: worker carrying young queen. ©Mathilde Vidal

Sources:
Vidal, M., F. Königseder, J. Giehr, A. Schrempf, C. Lucas & J. Heinze, 2021. Worker ants promote outbreeding by transporting young queens to alien nests. Communications Biology 4: 515. Doi: 10.1038/s42003-021-02016-1
J-C. Lenoir, A. Schrempf, A. Lenoir, J. Heinze & J-L. Mercier, 2007. Genetic structure and reproductive strategy of the ant Cardiocondyla elegans: strictly monogynous nests invaded by unrelated sexuals. Molecular Ecology 16: 345-354. Doi: 10.1111/j.1365-294X.2006.03156.x

Flying high

19 May 2021 /

Great reed warbler avoids being roasted by the sun

Great reed warbler flies extremely high during migration

During migration, the great reed warbler may climb to extreme altitudes, Sissel Sjöberg and colleagues show. Presumably, that is to control their body temperature.

Imagine: the great reed warbler, a medium-sized songbird, climbs up to 6 kilometers above ground level during migration. The discovery of Sissel Sjöberg and colleagues also surprised the researchers themselves.

The birds breed in Europe and overwinter in tropical Africa; in both locations, they stay in reed beds. So, they make a big trip twice a year. They typically fly at night and use the day to rest and eat.

Nonstop

But when great reed warblers cross the Mediterranean, they cannot land. And when they fly over the Sahara Desert, it makes no sense to go down, because there is nothing edible there. Across such barriers, they continue to fly during daytime, traveling more than 30 hours non-stop if necessary.

To find out more about flight behaviour during migration, Sjöberg equipped several birds with data loggers that record various data during migration: light, ambient temperature, and altitude. In addition, the data loggers register the movements of the birds: whether they are flying, resting, or moving on the ground in search of food.

The birds fly at night at an altitude of 2400 meters on average, it turned out, which is already quite high. But if they prolong their fly into daytime, they go more than twice as high. At dawn they quickly climb to about 5400 meters, up to more than 6000. At dusk, they descend in an equally short time.

Why do they do that?

From an altitude of 1500 meters on, temperature and wind speed are the same between day and night; the temperature at 2400 meters is about 14 °C. So, that is no reason for going higher during daytime.

Heat radiation

A difference between day and night is the presence of the sun. The great reed warblers, the bodies of which are already warm due to their flapping flight, cannot stand the solar heat radiation, Sjöberg thinks. It puts them in danger of getting overheated. At 5400 meters it is 9 °C below zero; there, they will not be overheated by solar radiation. So, when the sun is shining, the birds better fly much higher.

An additional advantage may be that during the day, the birds have a better view of the landscape when flying higher. Also, they are out of reach of birds of prey, especially Eleonora’s falcon, which hunts up to 3500 meters.

The biennial migration is a great achievement. The long flying periods in which the great reed warbler goes extremely high during daytime make it extra impressive. Hats off.

Willy van Strien

Photo: Great reed warbler in breeding habitat. Zeynel Cebeci (Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0)

Source:
Sjöberg, S., G. Malmiga, A. Nord, A. Andersson, J. Bäckman, M. Tarka, M. Willemoes, K. Thorup, B. Hansson, T. Alerstam & D. Hasselquist, 2021. Extreme altitudes during diurnal flights in a nocturnal songbird migrant. Science 372: 646-648. Doi: 10.1126/science.abe7291

Hanging baskets

19 April 2021 /

Ants grow plants in tree nests

Well-maintained ant garden of Camponotus femoratus and Crematogaster levior

Some ants have ant gardens. In their nests, one or more plant species are flourishing. The ants are good gardeners, as a Brazilian research team shows: they select the plants carefully and protect them.

In the forests of the Amazon region, you can see hanging baskets, balls from which plants grow. They are the nests of ants that live in trees. These ant gardens  benefit both parties. The plants belong to species that do not root in the soil but grow on tree branches (or in an arboreal ant’s nest), so-called epiphytes. They benefit because the ants disperse the seeds and fertilize the plants that germinate. The ants benefit because the plant roots strengthen the nest and make it rainproof.

Most of the hanging gardens in the Amazon region belong to two ant species that live together: Camponotus femoratus and Crematogaster levior. They share nests and foraging trails but keep their broods separated. A Brazilian research group describes how well this ant duo takes care of their gardens.

Division of tasks

The two species have divided the tasks. Crematogaster levior goes out to get food. The researchers think that it also is the one that, within a colony, takes the initiative to create a new nest; a colony contains on average 17 nests. Crematogaster levior workers are in the majority, especially in young nests; in initial nests, they are even the only ones.

But Camponotus femoratus is the stronger and more aggressive of the two. He constructs and defends the nests.

This species is also the one that collects seeds of the desired plants and puts them in the cardboard nest wall. He is picky: of the many epiphyte species that grow in South America, the ants only use a handful. Only one or two species are grown per nest.

The most common garden plant is Peperomia macrostachya. Probably, the ants are fond of it because, in addition to nectar glands, flowers and fruits, it also has oil glands. Oil is a hard-to-find part of the diet, so these glands are valuable. Among other plants used are Philodendron species.

Maintenance of ant gardens

The ants take good care of the plants. If a leaf is damaged, experiments showed, workers of Camponotus femoratus will gather there; they are triggered by volatile substances that are released upon damage. So, they arrive at places where herbivore insects are gnawing and they can chase them away. Especially damage to the precious Peperomia macrostachya provokes a rapid influx of many workers.

In addition, the ants prune ‘weeds’. The walls of an ants’ nest are an attractive growing place for many epiphytes because they are rich in nutrients. But the ants prevent the growth of unwanted plants that would compete with the garden plants. If the wrong seeds stick to the wall, the ants will remove them, and if the wrong plants germinate, they will cut the stem or leaves.

No wonder that the garden plants flourish and the hanging baskets look good.

Willy van Strien

Photo: Garden with Philodendron of the ant duo Camponotus femoratus and Crematogaster levior. ©Ricardo Eduardo Vicente

More about gardening ants: mini garden

Sources:
Pereira, A.A., I.V. da Silva & R.E. Vicente, 2021. Interaction between epiphytic chemical allelopathy and ant‑pruning determining the composition of Amazonian ant‑garden epiphytes. Arthropod-Plant Interactions, online April 9. Doi: 10.1007/s11829-021-09825-5
Dacquin, P., F. Degueldre & R.E. Vicente, 2021. Relative colony size of parabiotic species demonstrates inversion with growth. Insectes Sociaux, online January 2. Doi: 10.1007/s00040-020-00798-x
Vicente, R.E., W. Dáttilo & T.J. Izzo, 2014. Differential recruitment of Camponotus femoratus (Fabricius) ants in response to ant garden herbivory. Neotropical Entomology 43: 519-525. Doi: 10.1007/s13744-014-0245-6

New body

17 March 2021 /

Loose head regenerates a complete Elysia sea slug

Elysia sea slug can grow new body from head

Sea slugs Elysia marginata en Elysia atroviridis can decapitate themselves and regrow a new body from the loose head, Sayaka Mitoh en Yoichi Yusa show. A bizarre phenomenon. Why do they do it, and how do they survive?

Sayaka Mitoh and Yoichi Yusa must have been dumbfounded when seeing sea slugs that they kept in their lab, species Elysia marginata, sever their heads from their bodies. The loose heads moved around, as they report. After a day, the wounds were closed. In some cases, especially in young sea slugs, things got even crazier: the head began to feed; after a week, a new body started to grow and in three weeks it was complete.

The loose bodies also moved for a while, sometimes even months, but eventually they decomposed. No new head appeared on any loose body.

Parasite

There are more animals that can regrow a missing body part, such as a lizard that shed its tail or a fiddle crab that lost a claw. But this – regenerating almost an entire body – is very extreme. These sea slugs even have a groove behind the head as a predetermined breakage plane for self-decapitation. Why do they do it?

In any case, it is not to escape from a predator, like a lizard sheds its tail when a predator grasps it. The sea slugs take hours to separate body from head; that is not effective to avoid predation. And when the researchers simulated an attack by teasing them, nothing happened. The animals have a different defence mechanism against predators: they are poisonous.

The reason for self-decapitation became clear by observations on wild-caught specimens of a related species, Elysia atroviridis. Once in the lab, some of them shed the whole body, and these specimens turned out to contain a parasite, a copepod of the genus Arthurius. It is a large parasite that occupies almost the entire body of its host. In fact, a parasitized sea slug has already lost its body. If it sheds it, it will get rid of the parasite while losing almost nothing more.

Chloroplasts

But how does it survive without organs such as heart and kidneys? This has to do with a special property of sacoglossan sea slugs, to which Elysia belongs, the researchers suppose. They extract chloroplasts from algal food and incorporate them in special cells that line their highly branched digestive gland. The head also contains chloroplasts. Thanks to the chloroplasts, which they need to survive, these sea slugs can endure a period without food, it was known.

It is a mystery how exactly they utilise the chloroplasts. The chloroplasts continue to do what they do in plants: they convert carbon dioxide into carbohydrates with the help of sunlight, a process called photosynthesis. Whether the sea slugs can survive on sunlight as a result, just like plants, is a matter of debate.

Regardless, it may well be thanks to the chloroplasts that a loose head of Elysia marginata and Elysia atroviridis survives.

No eternal life

Parasitized Elysia sea slugs shed their worthless bodies. But they only manage to grow a new one from the head when they are young. The loose head of an older specimen does not feed and does not grow, but will die within ten days. Shedding and regrowing a body is not a recipe for eternal life.

Willy van Strien

Photo: Elysia marginata. Budak (via Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The research explained on YouTube

Sources:
Mitoh, S. & Y. Yusa, 2021. Extreme autotomy and whole-body regeneration in photosynthetic sea slugs. Current Biology 31: R233-R234. Doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.01.014
Wägele, H., 2015. Photosynthesis and the role of plastids (kleptoplastids) in Sacoglossa (Heterobranchia, Gastropoda): a short review. Aquatic Science & Management 3: 1-7. Doi: 10.35800/jasm.3.1.2015.12431

False alarm

4 March 2021 /

Superb lyrebird male tries to prolong a female’s visit

a male superb lyrebirds show is also used to manipulate females

A male superb lyrebird can deceive a female into believing that danger is imminent, Anastasia Dalziell and colleagues think. This increases the chance that she will stay for a while and copulation ensues.

Superb lyrebirds are masters of imitating all possible sounds, and males make clever use of that talent. When a female pays a visit, a male imitates the sound of a flock of alarmed songbirds, creating the illusion that a predator is nearby, Anastasia Dalziell and colleagues write. Then she might stay a little longer than she really wanted.

The superb lyrebird (Menura novaehollandiae), one of the largest passerine species, lives in the forests of South East Australia. Males and females do not form breeding pairs; each bird lives in its own territory. Females have one young per year, which they raise on their own.

Just watching

During the breeding season, males make themselves as attractive as possible. They construct mounds in their territory, where they sing their songs. Sometimes they sing a special song accompanied by a dance according to fixed rules, as Dalziell described earlier, throwing their decorative tail feathers over their body and head.

The purpose of a male’s show, of course, is to attract females and get them to copulate, because every mating can result in a young that he sires. Females visit several males before making their choice. As a result, a female may come to watch a displaying male, but refrain from mating with him in the end.

That is not what he intended.

Illusion of danger

When she is about to leave without copulating, he adds a new element to his song, which is remarkably similar to the sound of a flock of aroused songbirds.

Small songbirds get aroused when they detect a predator, such as a snake, large lizard, roosting owl, or perched hawk. They utter alarm calls to recruit others and harass the enemy together. The researchers show how accurately a male lyrebird mimics such mobbing flock of multiple simultaneously calling birds. Even the noise of beating wings is incorporated into his song. It is so accurate, that small songbirds are misled and approach to join.

The predators that arouse the small birds are dangerous for lyrebirds too. Therefore, the researchers hypothesize, the song creates the illusion that danger is imminent; the female is inclined to stay, and there is a chance that a copulation will happen.

Deception

A male superb lyrebird also utters this cacophony during mating. This job is not done in a few seconds, as it is other birds. Only after havng sat on her for more than half a minute, does he transfer his sperm. From the moment he mounts her until the end, he mimics the sound of a mobbing flock to prevent her from leaving too soon. During mating, he beats his wings in front of him, obscuring her view. She is unable then to assess whether it is safe to go, the authors suggest.

In conclusion, the superb lyrebird male uses his song not only to advertise his good health and condition, as is usual, but also to get a female to stay by giving a false signal of danger. That is deception.

Whether a female will stay longer because of the false alarm, the researchers don’t know. To find out, they would have to do experiments, which would be difficult for this species.

Willy van Strien

Photo: Courting male, covered with his tail. Kim Edol (via Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Anastasia Dalziell about her research on YouTube

Sources:
Dalziell, A.H., A.C. Maisey, R.D. Magrath & J.A. Welbergen, 2021. Male lyrebirds create a complex acoustic illusion of a mobbing flock during courtship and copulation. Current Biology, online February 25. Doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.02.003
Dalziell, A.H., R. A. Peters, A. Cockburn, A.D. Dorland, A.C. Maisey & R.D. Magrath, 2013. Dance choreography is coordinated with song repertoire in a complex avian display. Current Biology 23, 17 juni online. Doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.05.018

Shrimp keepers

24 February 2021 /

Longfin damselfish have their algal farms fertilized

Longfin damselfish grows algae with help of shrimp

Every intruder is chased away from the algal farm of the longfin damselfish, but a swarm of opossum shrimp is allowed stay and even receives protection. For good reason, Rohan Brooker and colleagues report.

The longfin damselfish (Stegastes diencaeus) is an aggressive, territorial fish that lives on coral reefs. It grows its own food by creating a farm of a few square meters where palatable algae grow. It tends its algae and defends its territory fiercely; all animals are chased off.

Or rather: almost all animals. Rohan Brooker and colleagues show that during the day, a swarm of opossum shrimp (Mysidium integrum) can be found in many algal farms. A farmer not only tolerates the shrimp’s presence, but it also protects them from their predators, although it takes some extra effort. Apparently, the tiny animals are worth it.

Flourishing farm

Why would an algae-farming longfin damselfish care about the shrimp, Brooker wondered. Although the fish supplements its algae diet with some small animals, it does not eat these shrimp. Perhaps, Brooker supposed, the shrimp are fertilizing the algae with their feces.

And that turned out to be the case. A farm with a swarm of shrimp does better than a farm without such swarm, thanks to nutrients excreted bythe shrimp. It hosts more large brown algae that form a structure on which turf-algae, which the damselfish prefers to eat, grow well. This translates into a better condition of the fish: damselfish with a shrimp swarm on their farm have a larger energy reserve than colleagues with a non-fertilized farm.

Brookers conducted his research on coral reefs off the coast of Belize, Central America.

Domesticated

Thus, the farming fish benefits for its flourishing crop, the shrimp for its guarded refuge. There are no shrimp swarms to be found outside farms during daytime. The shrimp leave the farm at night, when it is safe, to filter food from the water at the surface. Then they return to their permanent residence.

The fidelity to this place is so strong that young shrimp remain in their parents’ farm. Therefore, the authors consider the relationship between longfin damselfish and opossum shrimp as an early stage of domestication. The fish ‘keep’ the shrimp as livestock.

Willy van Strien

Photo: Longfin damselfish Stegastes diencaeus. Mark Rosenstein (Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0)

The research explained on YouTube

Source:
Brooker, R.M., J.M. Casey, Z-L. Cowan, T.L. Sih, D.L. Dixson, A. Manica & W.E. Feeney, 2020. Domestication via the commensal pathway in a fish-invertebrate mutualism. Nature Communications 11: 6253. Doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-19958-5

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