Tentacled snakes turn C-starts to their advantage and predict future prey behavior.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Catania KC
PROVIDER: S-EPMC2699377 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Jul
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Tentacled snakes turn C-starts to their advantage and predict future prey behavior.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20090619 27
Fish are elusive prey with a short-latency escape behavior--the C-start--initiated to either the left or right by a "race" between 2 giant Mauthner neurons in the fish brainstem. Water disturbances usually excite the ipsilateral neuron, which massively excites contralateral motor neurons, resulting in a rapid turn away from striking predators. Here, it is reported that tentacled snakes (Erpeton tentaculatus) exploit this normally adaptive circuitry by feinting with their body, triggering the Mau ...[more]
Similar Datasets
Project description:BACKGROUND: Aquatic tentacled snakes (Erpeton tentaculatus) can take advantage of their prey's escape response by startling fish with their body before striking. The feint usually startles fish toward the snake's approaching jaws. But when fish are oriented at a right angle to the jaws, the C-start escape response translates fish parallel to the snake's head. To exploit this latter response, snakes must predict the future location of the fish. Adult snakes can make this prediction. Is it learned, or are tentacled snakes born able to predict future fish behavior? METHODS AND FINDINGS: Laboratory-born, naïve snakes were investigated as they struck at fish. Trials were recorded at 250 or 500 frames per second. To prevent learning, snakes were placed in a water container with a clear transparency sheet or glass bottom. The chamber was placed over a channel in a separate aquarium with fish below. Thus snakes could see and strike at fish, without contact. The snake's body feint elicited C-starts in the fish below the transparency sheet, allowing strike accuracy to be quantified in relationship to the C-starts. When fish were oriented at a right angle to the jaws, naïve snakes biased their strikes to the future location of the escaping fish's head, such that the snake's jaws and the fish's translating head usually converged. Several different types of predictive strikes were observed. CONCLUSIONS: The results show that some predators have adapted their nervous systems to directly compensate for the future behavior of prey in a sensory realm that usually requires learning. Instead of behavior selected during their lifetime, newborn tentacled snakes exhibit behavior that has been selected on a different scale--over many generations. Counter adaptations in fish are not expected, as tentacled snakes are rare predators exploiting fish responses that are usually adaptive.
| S-EPMC2886828 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Quantifying the performance of animals is a powerful methodology for determining the functional consequences of morphological variation. For example, snakes consume prey whole, and variation in the anatomy of their trophic apparatus directly affects gape and limits maximal prey size. However, for the foraging ecology of snakes and other systems, scant data exist regarding how often maximal capacities are taxed in nature. Hence, we quantified: (1) maximal gape, (2) the size of prey relative to maximal gape, and (3) how the type and relative size of prey affected behavior and prey handling times (HTs) for two species of natricine snakes that primarily eat soft- (Regina septemvittata) or hard-shelled (Liodytes alleni) crayfish. Liodytes alleni had significantly larger maximal gape than R. septemvittata with equal snout-vent length. The percentages of large prey (>60% maximal gape area) consumed in the field were low in both R. septemvittata (22%) and L. alleni (2%). However, R. septemvittata, especially juveniles, ate relatively larger prey than L. alleni. Strategies for dealing with the seasonal scarcity of small crayfish differed as juvenile R. septemvittata commonly removed and ate only chelipeds from crayfish too large to swallow whole, whereas juvenile L. alleni ate many small odonate nymphs. During laboratory trials, unlike R. septemvittata, L. alleni usually used its body to restrain prey with behaviors that depended on relative prey size and prey hardness. Liodytes alleni consumed soft-shelled crayfish significantly faster than R. septemvittata and significantly faster than hard-shelled crayfish. Several of the differences in gape, prey size, and prey HTs and behavior between the crayfish-eating snakes resemble those between two phylogenetically distant species of homalopsid snakes that consume either hard- or soft-shelled crabs. In both groups of crustacean-eating snakes, the decreased capture success in captivity and the rare consumption of relatively large hard-shelled crustaceans in the field suggest that the ability to capture this type of prey constrains prey size more commonly than maximal gape. Based on data integrating snake size and gape with the relative mass of intact prey, the predicted potential feeding performance R. septemvittata consuming intact prey exceeded that of the other three species.
| S-EPMC8023418 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BACKGROUND: Vertebrate predators use a broad arsenal of behaviors and weaponry for overcoming fractious and potentially dangerous prey. A unique array of predatory strategies occur among snakes, ranging from mechanical modes of constriction and jaw-holding in non-venomous snakes, to a chemical means, venom, for quickly dispatching prey. However, even among venomous snakes, different prey handling strategies are utilized, varying from the strike-and-hold behaviors exhibited by highly toxic elapid snakes to the rapid strike-and-release envenomation seen in viperid snakes. For vipers, this mode of envenomation represents a minimal risk predatory strategy by permitting little contact with or retaliation from prey, but it adds the additional task of relocating envenomated prey which has wandered from the attack site. This task is further confounded by trails of other unstruck conspecific or heterospecific prey. Despite decades of behavioral study, researchers still do not know the molecular mechanism which allows for prey relocation. RESULTS: During behavioral discrimination trials (vomeronasal responsiveness) to euthanized mice injected with size-fractionated venom, Crotalus atrox responded significantly to only one protein peak. Assays for enzymes common in rattlesnake venoms, such as exonuclease, L-amino acid oxidase, metalloproteinase, thrombin-like and kallikrein-like serine proteases and phospholipase A(2), showed that vomeronasal responsiveness was not dependent on enzymatic activity. Using mass spectrometry and N-terminal sequencing, we identified the proteins responsible for envenomated prey discrimination as the non-enzymatic disintegrins crotatroxin 1 and 2. Our results demonstrate a novel and critical biological role for venom disintegrins far beyond their well-established role in disruption of cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix interactions. CONCLUSIONS: These findings reveal the evolutionary significance of free disintegrins in venoms as the molecular mechanism in vipers allowing for effective relocation of envenomated prey. The presence of free disintegrins in turn has led to evolution of a major behavioral adaptation (strike-and-release), characteristic of only rattlesnakes and other vipers, which exploits and refines the efficiency of a pre-existing chemical means of predation and a highly sensitive olfaction system. This system of a predator chemically tagging prey represents a novel trend in the coevolution of predator-prey relationships.
| S-EPMC3635877 | biostudies-other
Project description:Theoretical accounts propose honesty as a central determinant of trustworthiness impressions and trusting behavior. However, behavioral and neural evidence on the relationships between honesty and trust is missing. Here, combining a novel paradigm that successfully induces trustworthiness impressions with functional MRI and multivariate analyses, we demonstrate that honesty-based trustworthiness is represented in the posterior cingulate cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and intraparietal sulcus. Crucially, brain signals in these regions predict individual trust in a subsequent social interaction with the same partner. Honesty recruited the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), and stronger functional connectivity between the VMPFC and temporoparietal junction during honesty encoding was associated with higher trust in the subsequent interaction. These results suggest that honesty signals in the VMPFC are integrated into trustworthiness beliefs to inform present and future social behaviors. These findings improve our understanding of the neural representations of an individual's social character that guide behaviors during interpersonal interactions.
| S-EPMC6858375 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Batesian mimicry, in which harmless species (mimics) deter predators by deceitfully imitating the warning signals of noxious species (models), generates striking cases of phenotypic convergence that are classic examples of evolution by natural selection. However, mimicry of venomous coral snakes has remained controversial because of unresolved conflict between the predictions of mimicry theory and empirical patterns in the distribution and abundance of snakes. Here we integrate distributional, phenotypic and phylogenetic data across all New World snake species to demonstrate that shifts to mimetic coloration in nonvenomous snakes are highly correlated with coral snakes in both space and time, providing overwhelming support for Batesian mimicry. We also find that bidirectional transitions between mimetic and cryptic coloration are unexpectedly frequent over both long- and short-time scales, challenging traditional views of mimicry as a stable evolutionary 'end point' and suggesting that insect and snake mimicry may have different evolutionary dynamics.
| S-EPMC4858746 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Venoms are best known for their ability to incapacitate prey. In predatory groups, venom potency is predicted to reflect ecological and evolutionary drivers relating to diet. While venoms have been found to have preyspecific potencies, the role of diet breadth on venom potencies has yet to be tested at large macroecological scales. Here, using a comparative analysis of 100 snake species, we show that the evolution of prey-specific venom potencies is contingent on the breadth of a species' diet. We find that while snake venom is more potent when tested on species closely related to natural prey items, we only find this prey-specific pattern in species with taxonomically narrow diets. While we find that the taxonomic diversity of a snakes' diet mediates the prey specificity of its venom, the species richness of its diet was not found to affect these prey-specific potency patterns. This indicates that the physiological diversity of a species' diet is an important driver of the evolution of generalist venom potencies. These findings suggest that the venoms of species with taxonomically diverse diets may be better suited to incapacitating novel prey species and hence play an important role for species within changing environments.
| S-EPMC7076792 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Newts and salamanders show remarkable diversity in antipredator behavior, developed to enhance their chemical defenses and/or aposematism. The present study reports on the antipredator behavior of newts (Cynops pyrrhogaster) in response to snakes. Newts displayed a significant amount of tail-wagging and tail-undulation in response to a contact stimulus from the snake's tongue, which is a snake-specific predator stimulus, as compared to a control stimulus (behavioral scores: tongue, 1.05 ± 0.41; control, 0.15 ± 0.15). Newts that were kept in warm temperature conditions, 20°C (at which snakes are active in nature), performed tail displays more frequently than newts kept in low-temperature conditions, 4°C (at which snakes are inactive in nature). Our results suggest that the tail displays of C. pyrrhogaster could function as an antipredator defense; they direct a snake's attention to its tail to prevent the snake from attacking more vulnerable body parts. We also discussed the reason for inter-populational variation in the tendency of newts to perform tail displays.
| S-EPMC8629279 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Prey-tracking behavior is common in snail-killing predators, but in the family Lampyridae, this behavior has been validated in only a single species even though this Coleopteran family includes many specialist snail predators. The endemic firefly Pyrocoelia atripennis is a major snail-killing predator in the Yaeyama Islands of Japan, and the larvae often climb on the trees and grasses at night. This tree-climbing behavior is relevant to larval food choices and anti-predatory defenses of land snails. This study examined whether lampyrid larvae can track snail mucus trails and examined larval prey preferences using alternative choice experiments. In addition, predation trials were conducted to evaluate which snail species are potential prey. P. atripennis larvae significantly selected mucous trails over distilled water or control (no-trail) treatments. In addition, a semi-arboreal species was preferred over a ground-dwelling species. In predation trials, the larvae preyed on five out of 10 endemic snail species, all of which were semi-arboreal or arboreal species. Ground-dwelling Cyclophoridae and Aegista species have effective anti-predatory defenses consisting of an operculum or "foamy-lid" that fills the shell aperture. Whether the prey has a lid affects the predation success of lampyrid larvae, and larval tree-climbing behavior may be an adaptation used to search for semi-arboreal and arboreal land snails that lack defensive lids. Furthermore, snail mucus left on the plant stem may help the lampyrid larvae to locate their prey.
| S-EPMC6921978 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundEfficient venom delivery systems are known to occur only in varanoid lizards and advanced colubroidean snakes among squamate reptiles. Although components of these venomous systems might have been present in a common ancestor, the two lineages independently evolved strikingly different venom gland systems. In snakes, venom is produced exclusively by serous glands in the upper jaw. Within the colubroidean radiation, lower jaw seromucous infralabial glands are known only in two distinct lineages-the basal pareatids and the more advanced Neotropical dipsadines known as "goo-eating snakes". Goo-eaters are a highly diversified, ecologically specialized clade that feeds exclusively on invertebrates (e.g., gastropod molluscs and annelids). Their evolutionary success has been attributed to their peculiar feeding strategies, which remain surprisingly poorly understood. More specifically, it has long been thought that the more derived Dipsadini genera Dipsas and Sibynomorphus use glandular toxins secreted by their infralabial glands to extract snails from their shells.ResultsHere, we report the presence in the tribe Dipsadini of a novel lower jaw protein-secreting delivery system effected by a gland that is not functionally related to adjacent teeth, but rather opens loosely on the oral epithelium near the tip of the mandible, suggesting that its secretion is not injected into the prey as a form of envenomation but rather helps control the mucus and assists in the ingestion of their highly viscous preys. A similar protein-secreting system is also present in the goo-eating genus Geophis and may share the same adaptive purpose as that hypothesized for Dipsadini. Our phylogenetic hypothesis suggests that the acquisition of a seromucous infralabial gland represents a uniquely derived trait of the goo-eating clade that evolved independently twice within the group as a functionally complex protein-secreting delivery system.ConclusionsThe acquisition by snail-eating snakes of such a complex protein-secreting system suggests that the secretion from the hypertrophied infralabial glands of goo-eating snakes may have a fundamental role in mucus control and prey transport rather than envenomation of prey. Evolution of a functional secretory system that combines a solution for mucus control and transport of viscous preys is here thought to underlie the successful radiation of goo-eating snakes.
| S-EPMC4021269 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Detecting and locating prey are key to predatory success within trophic chains. Predators use various signals through specialized visual, olfactory, auditory or tactile sensory systems to pinpoint their prey. Snakes chemically sense their prey through a highly developed auxiliary olfactory sense organ, the vomeronasal organ (VNO). In natricine snakes that are able to feed on land and water, the VNO plays a critical role in predatory behavior by detecting cues, known as vomodors, which are produced by their potential prey. However, the chemical nature of these cues remains unclear. Recently, we demonstrated that specific proteins-parvalbumins-present in the cutaneous mucus of the common frog (Rana temporaria) may be natural chemoattractive proteins for these snakes. Here, we show that parvalbumins and parvalbumin-like proteins, which are mainly intracellular, are physiologically present in the epidermal mucous cells and mucus of several frog and fish genera from both fresh and salt water. These proteins are located in many tissues and function as Ca(2+) buffers. In addition, we clarified the intrinsic role of parvalbumins present in the cutaneous mucus of amphibians and fishes. We demonstrate that these Ca(2+)-binding proteins participate in innate bacterial defense mechanisms by means of calcium chelation. We show that these parvalbumins are chemoattractive for three different thamnophiine snakes, suggesting that these chemicals play a key role in their prey-recognition mechanism. Therefore, we suggest that recognition of parvalbumin-like proteins or other calcium-binding proteins by the VNO could be a generalized prey-recognition process in snakes. Detecting innate prey defense mechanism compounds may have driven the evolution of this predator-prey interaction.
| S-EPMC3384659 | biostudies-literature