Rattlesnakes use chemical stimuli in ambush site selection and for relocation of envenomated prey through strike-induced chemosensory searching. Shifts in responsiveness to prey chemicals have been documented in many snakes, and often correlate with prey commonly taken as snakes increase in age and size as well as geographical locations of the species. For instance, neonate rattlesnakes that pr...

In this review, we summarize the energetic and physiological correlates of prey handling and ingestion in lizards and snakes. There were marked differences in the magnitude of aerobic metabolism during prey handling and ingestion between these two groups, although they show a similar pattern of variation as a function of relative prey mass. For lizards, the magnitude of aerobic metabolism durin...

More than 63,000 cars were reported stolen in Los Angeles in 2003–04. However, the distribution of thefts across car types is very uneven. Some cars types such as the Honda Civic were stolen at much higher frequencies than the majority of car types. Charnov’s classic prey selection model suggests that such uneven targeting should be related to variations in the environmental abundance, expected...

As known, to finish this book, you may not need to get it at once in a day. Doing the activities along the day may make you feel so bored. If you try to force reading, you may prefer to do other entertaining activities. But, one of concepts we want you to have this book is that it will not make you feel bored. Feeling bored when reading will be only unless you don't like the book. group selecti...

BACKGROUND Members of the predatory gastropod genus Conus use a venom comprised of a cocktail of peptide neurotoxins, termed conotoxins or conopeptides, to paralyze prey and conotoxin gene family members diversify via strong positive selection. Because Conus venoms are used primarily to subdue prey, the evolution of venoms is likely affected by predator-prey interactions. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPA...

General predictions of community dynamics require that insights derived from local habitats can be scaled up to explain phenomena across geographic scales. Across these larger spatial extents, adaptation can play an increasing role in determining the outcome of species interactions. If local adaptation is common, then our ability to generalize measures of species interaction strength across com...

Recent work indicates that the interaction between body-size-dependent demographic processes can generate macroecological patterns such as the scaling of population density with body size. In this study, we evaluate this possibility for grazing protists and also test whether demographic parameters in these models are correlated after controlling for body size. We compiled data on the body-size ...

The evolution of aposematism, a phenomenon where prey species conspicuously advertise their unprofitability to predators, is puzzling. How did conspicuousness evolve, if it simultaneously increased the likelihood of an inexperienced predator to detect the prey and presumably kill it? Antiapostatic selection, where rare prey is predated relatively more often, is considered as another major diffi...