| inversely related aposematic traits: reduced conspicuousness evolves with increased toxicity in a polymorphic poison-dart frog. | prevailing theory contends that aposematic coloration evolves in tandem with toxicity so that the evolution of increased toxicity will accompany the evolution of greater conspicuousness. although variation in aposematic coloration within single species should be selectively constrained, because individuals varying from a predator-recognized warning signal will incur greater risk of predation, several species of poison-dart frogs display remarkable phenotypic variation. this variation may have ev ... | 2011 | 21644954 |
| not everything is black and white: color and behavioral variation reveal a continuum between cryptic and aposematic strategies in a polymorphic poison frog. | aposematism and crypsis are often viewed as two extremes of a continuum of visual conspicuousness to predators. theory predicts that behavioral and coloration conspicuousness should vary in tandem along the conspicuousness spectrum for antipredator strategies to be effective. here we used visual modeling of contrast and behavioral observations to examine the conspicuousness of four populations of the granular poison frog, oophaga granulifera, which exhibits almost continuous variation in dorsal ... | 2013 | 24094333 |
| poor alkaloid sequestration by arrow poison frogs of the genus phyllobates from costa rica. | frogs of the genus phyllobates from colombia are known to contain the highly toxic alkaloid batrachotoxin, but species from central america exhibit only very low levels or are entirely free of this toxin. in the present study alcohol extracts from 101 specimens of phyllobates lugubris and phyllobates vittatus and 21 of three sympatric species (dendrobates pumilio, dendrobates auratus, dendrobates granuliferus) from costa rica were analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. whereas the ext ... | 2014 | 24467995 |
| histrionicotoxin alkaloids finally detected in an ant. | workers of the ant carebarella bicolor collected in panama were found to have two major poison-frog alkaloids, cis- and trans-fused decahydroquinolines (dhqs) of the 269ab type, four minor 269ab isomers, two minor 269b isomers, and three isomers of dhq 271d. for the first time in an ant, however, the dhqs were accompanied by six histrionicotoxins (htxs), viz., 283a, 285a, 285b, 285c, 287a, and 287d. this co-occurrence of the htx and dhq alkaloids is the usual pattern seen in dendrobatid frogs. t ... | 2012 | 23088730 |