Antipredator behaviours of a spider mite in response to cues of dangerous and harmless predators

Prey are known to invest in costly antipredator behaviour when perceiving cues of dangerous, but not of relatively harmless predators. Whereas most studies investigate one type of antipredator behaviour, we studied several types (changes in oviposition, in escape and avoidance behaviour) in the spid...

Full description

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Experimental & applied acarology Vol. 69; no. 3; pp. 263 - 276
Main Authors:	Dias, Cleide Rosa, Bernardo, Ana Maria Guimarães, Mencalha, Jussara, Freitas, Caelum Woods Carvalho, Sarmento, Renato Almeida, Pallini, Angelo, Janssen, Arne
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Cham Springer International Publishing 01-07-2016 Springer Nature B.V
Subjects:	Animal Ecology Animal Genetics and Genomics Animal Systematics/Taxonomy/Biogeography Animals Araneae Biomedical and Life Sciences Conspecifics Cues Entomology Escape Reaction Female Food Chain Leaves Life Sciences Mites Phytoseiulus macropilis Predators Predatory Behavior Prey Species Specificity Tetranychidae - physiology Tetranychus Trait-mediated interaction Predation risk Predator–prey interaction Phytoseiulus macropilis Tetranychus evansi Phytoseiulus longipes
Online Access:	Get full text
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!

Description
Summary:	Prey are known to invest in costly antipredator behaviour when perceiving cues of dangerous, but not of relatively harmless predators. Whereas most studies investigate one type of antipredator behaviour, we studied several types (changes in oviposition, in escape and avoidance behaviour) in the spider mite Tetranychus evansi in response to cues from two predatory mites. The predator Phytoseiulus longipes is considered a dangerous predator for T. evansi, whereas Phytoseiulus macropilis has a low predation rate on this prey, thus is a much less dangerous predator. Spider mite females oviposited less on leaf disc halves with predator cues than on clean disc halves, independent of the predator species. On entire leaf discs, they laid fewer eggs in the presence of cues of the dangerous predator than on clean discs, but not in the presence of cues of the harmless predator. Furthermore, the spider mites escaped more often from discs with cues of the dangerous predator than from discs without predator cues, but they did not escape more from discs with cues of the harmless predator. The spider mites did not avoid plants with conspecifics and predators. We conclude that the spider mites displayed several different antipredator responses to the same predator species, and that some of these antipredator responses were stronger with cues of dangerous predators than with cues of harmless predators.
Bibliography:	http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10493-016-0042-5 ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23
ISSN:	0168-8162 1572-9702
DOI:	10.1007/s10493-016-0042-5