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Behavioral Ecology Advance Access published online on April 29, 2007
Behavioral Ecology, doi:10.1093/beheco/arm027
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

State-dependent decision making: educated predators strategically trade off the costs and benefits of consuming aposematic prey

CA Barnett, M Bateson and C Rowe

Centre for Behaviour and Evolution, Newcastle University, Henry Wellcome Building, Framlington Place, Newcastle upon Tyne NE2 4HH, UK

Address correspondence to C. Barnett. E-mail: miriam_craig@xtra.co.nz.

Received 28 June 2006; revised 20 February 2007; accepted 27 February 2007.

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.


   INTRODUCTION
 
Aposematic prey signal their chemical defences to predators using conspicuous warning coloration (Cott 1940Go; Edmunds 1974Go). The benefits of being conspicuously colored are thought to arise through predator education because naive predators learn to avoid conspicuous defended prey more quickly than cryptic defended prey (Gittleman and Harvey 1980Go; Guilford 1990Go). Increasing the speed of aversion learning reduces the numbers of individual prey attacked and eaten during the learning process, providing potential selective benefits to the warning coloration. Aversion learning of conspicuous aposematic prey by avian predators is also faster when prey have higher levels of chemical defences (Skelhorn and Rowe 2006aGo). Therefore, the role of learning has been dominant in theories surrounding the evolution of aposematism (e.g. Rothschild et al. 1984Go; Guilford and Dawkins 1993Go; Speed 1993aGo; Speed and Turner 1999Go; Servedio 2000Go) and has received by far the most . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   METHODS
 
Study species and housing
Mass manipulations
Prey
Training
Experimental procedure
Simultaneous choice trials

   Results
 
The effects of food restriction on body mass of starlings
The effects of body state on foraging decisions
Simultaneous choice trials

   Discussion
 

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