[Review] 捕食者如何學習警戒性的獵物？
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| photo from fig.1 |
標題：Learning about aposematic prey
摘要
The question, “Why should prey advertise their presence to predators using warning coloration?” has been asked for over 150 years. It is now widely acknowledged that defended prey use conspicuous or distinctive colors to advertise their toxicity to would-be predators: a defensive strategy known as aposematism. One of the main approaches to understanding the ecology and evolution of aposematism and mimicry (where species share the same color pattern) has been to study how naive predators learn to associate prey’s visual signals with the noxious effects of their toxins. However, learning to associate a warning signal with a defense is only one aspect of what predators need to do to enable them to make adaptive foraging decisions when faced with aposematic prey and their mimics. The aim of our review is to promote the view that predators do not simply learn to avoid aposematic prey, but rather make adaptive decisions about both when to gather information about defended prey and when to include them in their diets. In doing so, we reveal what surprisingly little we know about what predators learn about aposematic prey and how they use that information when foraging. We highlight how a better understanding of predator cognition could advance theoretical and empirical work in the field
以往對於捕食者面對警戒性的人類的認知，就是捕食者會「避免」攻擊這樣的食物，而且應該會把這樣的獵物完全排除在牠們的菜單之內。然而近來的某些理論與實驗支持捕食者會把某些不好吃的獵物也列入可食用清單裡，這讓動物行為學家重新思考捕食者在面對有警戒性的獵物時，可能不會只是單純的學到「避免」，而是全面性的思考與學習何時可以吃，怎樣的獵物可以偶爾吃，什麼完全不能吃。
這篇回顧整理了這幾年行為科學家的想法與實驗，從思考捕食者如何避免，到思考捕食者如何適應性學習，而這樣思考的轉變又影響行為學在斑紋演化與生態作用機制的實驗設計與討論，讓科學家在連結捕食者與獵物間的角色有了未來的研究方向。
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