Do predatory adult odonates estimate their adult prey odonates’ body size and dispersal ability to proceed with a successful attack?
Main Article Content
Abstract
Predator-prey encounters are one of the most challenging behaviors that animals engage in and play a key role in structuring trophic linkages within food webs. Empirical studies suggest that predators (except pathogens, parasites, and parasitoids) tend to be larger in body size and have better dispersal ability than their prey items; however, when predators prey upon members of the same taxonomic group, it is unclear whether such relationships exist between predators and their prey items since both groups may have similar body sizes and dispersal abilities. Adult odonates can be used to test this as they prey upon other odonates within the same suborder, family, genus or species, although such records are uncommon. Using a dataset collected from Sri Lanka and India from 2012 to 2020, this study identified three types of predation behaviors between two suborders of Odonata, i.e., (i) Anisoptera (dragonflies) prey upon Anisoptera, (ii) Anisoptera prey upon Zygoptera (damselflies), and (iii) Zygoptera prey upon Zygoptera. There was no evidence of Anisoptera predation by Zygoptera. Study results showed strong evidence that there is a significant difference in body size (i.e., body length) and dispersal ability (i.e., hind-wing length) between adult predatory odonates and adult prey odonates for all three types of predations. This may indicate that predatory odonates estimate other odonate prey precisely to proceed with a successful attack.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors own the copyright to the articles published in JoTT. This is indicated explicitly in each publication. The authors grant permission to the publisher Wildlife Information Liaison Development (WILD) Society to publish the article in the Journal of Threatened Taxa. The authors recognize WILD as the original publisher, and to sell hard copies of the Journal and article to any buyer. JoTT is registered under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY), which allows authors to retain copyright ownership. Under this license the authors allow anyone to download, cite, use the data, modify, reprint, copy and distribute provided the authors and source of publication are credited through appropriate citations (e.g., Son et al. (2016). Bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera) of the southeastern Truong Son Mountains, Quang Ngai Province, Vietnam. Journal of Threatened Taxa 8(7): 8953–8969. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.2785.8.7.8953-8969). Users of the data do not require specific permission from the authors or the publisher.
References
Kruschke, J.K. (2013). Bayesian estimation supersedes the t test. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 142(2): 573–603. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029146
Kruschke, J.K. & M. Meredith (2020). BEST: Bayesian estimation supersedes the t test. R package version 0.5.1
Moretti, M., A.T.C. Dias, F. de Bello, F. Altermatt, S.L. Chown, F.M. Azcárate, J.R. Bell, B. Fournier, M. Hedde, J. Hortal, S. Ibanez, E. Öckinger, J.P. Sousa, J. Ellers & M.P. Berg (2017). Handbook of protocols for standardized measurement of terrestrial invertebrate functional traits. Functional Ecology 31(3): 558–567. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.12776
Siemann, E., D. Tilman & J. Haarstad (1999). Abundance, diversity and body size: patterns from a grassland arthropod community. Journal of Animal Ecology 68(4): 824–835. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2656.1999.00326.x
Waller, J.T., B. Willink, M. Tschol & E.I. Svensson (2019). The odonate phenotypic database, a new open data resource for comparative studies of an old insect order. Scientific Data 6(1): 316. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-019-0318-9
Woodward, G. & A.G. Hildrew (2002). Body-size determinants of niche overlap and intraguild predation within a complex food web. Journal of Animal Ecology 71(6): 1063–1074. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2656.2002.00669.x
Zhang, H. (2019). Dragonflies and damselflies of China. Chongqing University Press, Chongqing, China, xiv+1460pp.