An empirical test of 2-dimensional signal detection theory applied to Batesian mimicry

Kikuchi, David W.; Malick, Gaurav; Webster, Richard; Whissell, Emilee; Sherratt, Thomas N.

doi:10.1093/beheco/arv072

Cited by 18 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Colour is a highly salient trait to both humans and birds (e.g. see Kikuchi, Malick, Webster, Whissell, & Sherratt, 2015;Osorio, Jones, & Vorobyev, 1999) and since overshadowing occurs when attentional resources are allocated to responding to one trait at the expense of others (Mackintosh, 1976), one might expect that priority would be given to reacting to traits that will allow the receiver to identify the object as quickly as possible. Colour constancy, or the ability to identify the same hue under different lighting conditions, is widespread among animals (including humans), despite differences in the evolution of their visual systems (Wolfe et al, 2009).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hierarchical overshadowing of stimuli and its role in mimicry evolution

et al. 2015

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An elegant study by Kazemi et al. (2014, Current Biology, 24, 965e969) found that blue tits, Cyanistes caeruleus, that had been trained to distinguish between rewarding and nonrewarding prey subsequently avoided novel prey that had the same colour (but not the same shape or pattern) as the nonrewarding prey. Their work suggested that certain high-salience discriminatory traits can overshadow other informative traits, allowing imperfect mimics to establish. Here we began by replicating their ambitious experiment by evaluating the behaviour of 320 human subjects foraging on computer-generated prey. However, to fully understand how overshadowing might facilitate the establishment of incipient mimics, we significantly extended their protocol to a full factorial design involving mimics with colour, pattern and/or shape in common with their former models. As Kazemi et al. reported, participants placed more weight on colour similarity than on shape similarity when rejecting prey. Two-trait mimics with the same colour and pattern or the same colour and shape as their former models were avoided as frequently as perfect mimics, while colour-only mimics were avoided more frequently than shape-only mimics. Nevertheless, novel prey with no traits in common with nonrewarding models were avoided at high rates, possibly in part due to their dissimilarity to familiar rewarding prey. The implications of these findings for mimicry evolution are discussed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hierarchical overshadowing of stimuli and its role in mimicry evolution

et al. 2015

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“…The primary technique to avoid such 'over-fitting' involves preferring simple models over more complex models, all else being equal. We suggest that a preference for parsimonious models may be particularly important for receivers when models are relatively unprofitable to sample, because an over-fitted model is not only a poorer predictor, but also more costly to parametrize [18,19]. There has recently been a surge of interest in understanding how objects are categorized and what traits are attended to when predators make their discriminative decisions [39 -41].…”

Section: (B) Evidence That Predators Employ Simple Rather Than Complementioning

confidence: 99%

The perfection of mimicry: an information approach

Sherratt

Peet-Paré

2017

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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We consider why imperfect deceptive mimics can persist when it appears to be in the predator's interest to discriminate finely between mimics and their models. One theory is that a receiver will accept being duped if the model and mimic overlap in appearance and the relative costs of attacking the model are high. However, a more fundamental explanation for the difficulty of discrimination is not based on perceptual uncertainty, but simply based on a lack of information. In particular, predators in the process of learning may cease sampling imperfect mimics entirely because the immediate pay-off and future value of information is low, allowing such mimics to persist. This outcome will be particularly likely when the model is relatively costly to attack and/or the discriminative rules the predator has to learn are complex. Information limitations neatly explain why predators tend to adopt discriminative rules based on single traits (such as stripe colour), rather than on combinations of traits (such as stripe order). They also explain why predators utilize certain salient discriminative traits while ignoring equally informative ones (a phenomenon known as overshadowing), and why imperfect mimics may be more common in phenotypically diverse prey communities.This article is part of the themed issue 'Animal coloration: production, perception, function and application'.

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“…Sometimes, different signal components or modalities target different predators, but often they are complementary (Rowe & Guilford ; Kikuchi et al. , ). How signals and their components are received, learned, and generalized differs between receivers (Endler & Mappes ).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…First, warning signals often consist of several components (e.g., body shape, coloration, color pattern, odor, and behavior). Sometimes, different signal components or modalities target different predators, but often they are complementary (Rowe & Guilford 1999;Kikuchi et al 2015Kikuchi et al , 2016. How signals and their components are received, learned, and generalized differs between receivers .…”

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