Testing the effectiveness of pyrazine defences against spiders
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CHEMOECOLOGY
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Testing the effectiveness of pyrazine defences against spiders Emily R. Burdfield‑Steel1,2 · Jutta M. Schneider3 · Johanna Mappes1 · Susanne Dobler3 Received: 21 January 2020 / Accepted: 20 February 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Insects live in a dangerous world and may fall prey to a wide variety of predators, encompassing multiple taxa. As a result, selection may favour defences that are effective against multiple predator types, or target-specific defences that can reduce predation risk from particular groups of predators. Given the variation in sensory systems and hunting tactics, in particular between vertebrate and invertebrate predators, it is not always clear whether defences, such as chemical defences, that are effective against one group will be so against another. Despite this, the majority of research to date has focused on the role of a single predator species when considering the evolution of defended prey. Here we test the effectiveness of the chemical defences of the wood tiger moth, a species previously shown to have defensive chemicals targeted towards ants, against a common invertebrate predator: spiders. We presented both live moths and artificial prey containing their defensive fluids to female Trichonephila senegalensis and recorded their reactions. We found that neither of the moth’s two defensive fluids were able to repel the spiders, and confirmed that methoxypyrazines, a major component of the defences of both the wood tiger moth and many insect species, are ineffective against web-building spiders. Our results highlight the variability between predator taxa in their susceptibility to chemical defences, which can in part explain the vast variation in these chemicals seen in insects, and the existence of multiple defences in a single species. Keywords Chemical defence · Anti-predator defence · Pyrazines · Insects · Spiders
Introduction Almost all organisms are at risk of predation during some stage of their life. This strong selective pressure to avoid injury or death at the hands of a hungry predator has resulted in a diverse array of anti-predator strategies. Of these, chemical defence is one of the most taxonomically widespread Communicated by Günther Raspotnig. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00049-020-00305-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Emily R. Burdfield‑Steel [email protected] 1
Department of Biological and Environmental Science, University of Jyväskylä, 40014 Jyvaskyla, Finland
2
Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam, 1098 XH Amsterdam, The Netherlands
3
Institute of Zoology, Universität Hamburg, 20146 Hamburg, Germany
(Speed et al. 2012). While there has been a trend in the past decades to use a greater variety of predators to test the effectiveness of chemical defences, ants and birds still predominate in such studies. Although both groups are likely to be important pre
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