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Girls Rule, Boys Drool
The article I decided to read was about Alpine newts, Ichthyosaura alpestris. They are found in Europe and are about 10cm long. The predominant predator of this salamander is the Grass snake, Natrix Natrix. They wanted to study escape responses on males vs females. They also tested for air temperature differences.
Below is a video of their experimental design. They put the salamander in an arena and as a "predator stimulation", they had a Grass snake flick it's tongue on the salamander's tail. Then they measured the different speeds of the males and females and compared them. They also tested them in three different temperatures.
As you see in the results, on average the females fled faster than the males in all of the temperatures. The reason they came up with is that the females are less toxic than the males, so must compensate their predator defense by being faster.
This research is valuable for the study of amphibians because it helps us understand reasons behind their sexual dimorphism and also serve as a platform for sexual dimorphisms in other toxic species. Males are more toxic, but females are faster. And this is interesting because even though these males and females are of the same species, they have differences within themselves that make them unique.
http://www.sciencedirect.com.nuncio.cofc.edu/science/article/pii/S0003347213005782?np=y
2 comments:
Very interesting! From the first picture it looks like it has beautiful coloration. That's very cool that the males and females used different strategies to avoid predators. I recently read an article that compared predator escape strategies between males and females, I'm noticing that there is more sexual dimorphism in behavior than I would have first assumed!
Interesting parallel, Shannon. Makes me wonder whether male newts really are more toxic or whether it's just more worthwhile for them to stick around and defend their territory. To continue quoting The Clash (see the article title), "If I go there will be trouble, if I stay it will be double!"
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