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Prey crypticity reduces the proportion of group members searching for food

Cryptic coloration protects against solitary predators but its efficiency against social predators is untested. Social predators are peculiar because they have the option of searching for their own food or exploiting others’ food. Consequently a group is a mixture of food searchers and exploiters. Using flocks of nutmeg mannikins we tested the hypothesis that cryptic coloration increases the predator’s search costs leading to lower proportions of searchers within groups. When we placed clumps of white millet seed on a background that made them cryptic, flocks of mannikins took longer to find the food, made more detection errors and significantly reduced the proportion of birds engaged in searching in three of four flocks. We conclude that
cryptic coloration provides a greater reduction in predation pressure when predators happen to be social because fewer social predators search for cryptic than non-cryptic prey.


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Correspondence: Maryse Barrette, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada barrette.maryse@courrier.uqam.ca

Keywords: Cryptic prey, producer-scrounger game, social foraging, nutmeg mannikin


by Shan D. Duncan last modified 2006-08-05 15:20


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