Dyer Lee A, Floyd Ted
Environmental, Population, and Organismic Biology, University of Colorado, Campus Box 334, 80309-0334, Boulder, CO, USA.
Oecologia. 1993 Dec;96(4):575-582. doi: 10.1007/BF00320516.
To evaluate the role of predation in the evolution of diet specialization and to determine the effectiveness of various larval defenses, we offered lepidopteran larvae to colonies of the tropical ant Paraponera clavata. We recorded behavioral and physical characteristics of prey items and used log-linear models to analyze their importance as deterrents to predation by P. clavata. The most important determinant of probability of prey rejection by P. clavata was a prey's diet breadth; specialists were rejected by the ants significantly more than generalists. Other less important, but significant, predictors of prey rejection included ontogeny, morphology and chemistry. Late instar caterpillars were rejected more frequently than early instars, hairy caterpillars were rejected more frequently than caterpillars with other morphologies, and one caterpillar species with an unpalatable extract was rejected more frequently than two species with palatable extracts.
为了评估捕食在食性特化进化中的作用，并确定各种幼虫防御机制的有效性，我们将鳞翅目幼虫提供给热带蚂蚁——大齿猛蚁（Paraponera clavata）的蚁群。我们记录了猎物的行为和物理特征，并使用对数线性模型分析它们作为大齿猛蚁捕食威慑因素的重要性。大齿猛蚁拒绝捕食猎物的概率的最重要决定因素是猎物的食性广度；特化物种被蚂蚁拒绝的频率明显高于泛化物种。其他不太重要但具有显著影响的猎物拒绝预测因素包括个体发育、形态和化学性质。大龄幼虫比低龄幼虫更频繁地被拒绝，多毛的幼虫比具有其他形态的幼虫更频繁地被拒绝，一种具有难吃提取物的毛虫物种比两种具有可口提取物的毛虫物种更频繁地被拒绝。
