Prey chemicals

Cooper W.E. Jr. (1997). Correlated evolution of prey chemical discrimination with foraging, lingual morphology and vomeronasal chemoreceptor abundance in lizards. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 41, 257-265. 

Cooper, W. E. (1995) Foraging mode, prey chemical discrimination, and phylogeny in lizards. Anim. Behav. 50, 973-985. 

De Pemo, C. S. and Cooper, W. E. (1993) Prey chemical discrimination and strike-induced chemosensory searching in the lizard Liolaemus zapallarensis. Chemoecology 4, 86-92. 

Response to prey chemical cues by hatchling pine snakes (Pittwphis melanoleucus). Effects of incubation temperature and experience. Journal of Chemical Ecology 17, 1069-1078. 

An emerging generalization from studies of the susceptibility of consumers to prey chemical defense is that many small, low-mobility invertebrates such as amphipods, polychaetes, shell-less gastropods, and crabs readily consume seaweeds that produce chemicals that deter feeding by larger, mobile grazers like fishes and urchins.30,38,39,84-87 From most of these studies it is unclear whether... 

Although there is a considerable amount known about the effects of prey chemicals on predator feeding preferences, much less is known about the proximate or ultimate reasons why marine invertebrates avoid certain compounds. Even when compounds cause behavioral avoidance of a food, few studies have assessed how consumption of prey secondary metabolites affects the physiology (and ultimately the fitness) of invertebrate consumers. Two basic approaches have been used (1) comparing effects of natural prey items which naturally contain or lack various secondary metabolites, or (2) comparing the effects of artificially prepared diets with and without metabolites. Studies of the first group108 109 have been able to correlate metabolite presence with certain effects on consumers, but the effects of secondary metabolites are confounded by other traits (e.g., protein,... 

Interspecific Stimuli Kairomones (Compounds Used for the Benefit of the Receiver) Responses to Prey Chemicals... 

PREY CHEMICAL SIGNAL TRANSDUCTION IN THE VOMERONASAL SYSTEM OF GARTER... 

THE BIOCHEMICAL ROLE OF CALCIUM IN PREY CHEMICAL SIGNAL TRANSDUCTION... 

Many of the early investigations of prey chemical defenses were conducted by placing potential consumers into water containing secondary metabolites that had been extracted from potential prey. These assays lacked ecological realism in that (1) many of these compounds are not naturally leached into seawater (2) if they were, they would disperse rapidly and not be present at significant concentrations and (3) the potential predators would not normally encounter the... 

Because invertebrate consumers are relatively small, can be easily housed in the lab, and are often ecologically important consumers in marine communities, they have often been used in assays of prey chemical defenses. The slow feeding responses of certain marine invertebrates (e.g., sea stars and some gastropods) have encouraged some investigators to use behavioral tests (tube foot or tentacle retractions) as proxies for feeding deterrence. We provide one widely used example of this below, but concentrate most of our efforts on assays that measure feeding more directly. 

Sea anemones and some corals exist as solitary polyps. A single polyp should not be fed both a treatment and control food because response to unpalatable foods is not always immediate they often regurgitate noxious foods a few minutes after consumption. A study by Lindquist Hay (1995) illustrates this point. This study used the sea anemone Aiptasia pallida as a model larval predator to examine the long-term consequences of consuming prey chemical defenses. In this experiment, some anemones were fed a small squid-based food pellet that contained didemnin cyclic peptides (isolated from a Caribbean asicidian) while others were fed a similar pellet lacking didemnins. The assay food was made... 

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