Use the mutation diagram in the text (above paragraph 6) to answer the following:
Imagine a predator that preys on the organism represented by the colored circles above is introduced to an environment and at the bottom of the figure. This predator is really good at seeing prey that has a dark brown color. What would you expect to the population of the organism? Explain.
Answers
Answer:
Explanation:
Predation & herbivory
Predators and prey. Adaptations of predators that help them catch prey, and adaptations of prey that help them escape predators.
Key points
Predation is an interaction in which one organism, the predator, eats all or part of the body of another organism, the prey.
Herbivory is a form of predation in which the prey organism is a plant.
Predator and prey populations affect each other's dynamics. The sizes of predator and prey populations often go up and down in linked cycles.
Predators and prey often have adaptations—beneficial features arising by natural selection—that are related to their interaction. For prey, these include various defenses and warning signals, such as bright coloration.
Introduction
If you were asked to name one way that different species interact in nature, predation might be the first thing that comes to mind. After all, many of us have watched bears catching salmon, lions eating zebras, or octopuses capturing prey on the nature channel. In fact, this was the only television channel I was allowed to watch as a kid—I thought it was amazing!
In predation, a predator eats all or part of the body of its prey, with a positive (+) effect on the predator and a negative (-) effect on the prey. Nature shows on television highlight the drama of one animal killing another, but predation can also take less obvious forms. For instance, when a mosquito sucks a tiny bit of your blood, that can be viewed as a form of predation. So can herbivory, in which an animal—say, a cow or a bug—consumes part of a plant.^1
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In this article, we'll take a closer look at predation: the different forms it can take, how it can affect predator and prey populations, and how natural selection has shaped the features of predators and prey.
Answer:
Predator–prey relationships are a central component of community dynamics. Classic approaches have tried to understand and predict these relationships in terms of consumptive interactions between predator and prey species, but characterizing the interaction this way is insufficient to predict the complexity and context dependency inherent in predator–prey relationships. Recent approaches have begun to explore predator–prey relationships in terms of an evolutionary-ecological game in which predator and prey adapt to each other through reciprocal interactions involving context-dependent expression of functional traits that influence their biomechanics. Functional traits are defined as any morphological, behavioral, or physiological trait of an organism associated with a biotic interaction. Such traits include predator and prey body size, predator and prey personality, predator hunting mode, prey mobility, prey anti-predator behavior, and prey physiological stress. Here, I discuss recent advances in this functional trait approach. Evidence shows that the nature and strength of many interactions are dependent upon the relative magnitude of predator and prey functional traits. Moreover, trait responses can be triggered by non-consumptive predator–prey interactions elicited by responses of prey to risk of predation. These interactions in turn can have dynamic feedbacks that can change the context of the predator–prey interaction, causing predator and prey to adapt their traits—through phenotypically plastic or rapid evolutionary responses—and the nature of their interaction. Research shows that examining predator–prey interactions through the lens of an adaptive evolutionary-ecological game offers a foundation to explain variety in the nature and strength of predator–prey interactions observed in different ecological contexts.