Frog uses different strategies to escape ground, air predators
To escape danger, frogs move away from snakes, toward bats
2015-04-15
(Press-News.org) Frogs may flee from a ground predator and move towards an aerial predator, undercutting the flight path, according to a study using model predators published April 15, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Matthew Bulbert from Macquarie University, Australia and colleagues.
Escape from a predator is often the last line of defense for an organism. The authors of this study evaluated the effectiveness of different escape strategies of the ground-dwelling túngara frog from two types of predators, one approaching from the air and one from the ground. Researchers selected two disparate predators known to prey on calling túngara frogs. The aerial predator, modeled after a fringed-lipped bat, was deployed using a zip-line, which passed directly over the frog. The ground predator, a rubber snake modeled after a cat-eye snake, was pulled toward the calling frog along the ground. Both model predators were only deployed while males were actively calling.
Túngara frogs showed consistently distinct escape responses when attacked by ground versus aerial predators. The frogs fled away from the snake models. In stark contrast, the frogs moved toward the bat models, effectively undercutting the bat's flight path. The authors results reveal that prey escape direction reflect the type of predators' attacks. The authors suggest that this study emphasizes the flexibility of strategies used by prey to escape predators with diverse modes of attack.
INFORMATION:
In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0120546
Citation: Bulbert MW, Page RA, Bernal XE (2015) Danger Comes from All Fronts: Predator-Dependent Escape Tactics of Túngara Frogs. PLOS ONE 10(4): e0120546. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0120546
Funding: This work was partially supported by Texas Tech University funding to XEB. This research received no additional funding from any public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2015-04-15
EDMONTON, AB (April 12, 2015) -- "Pull my finger," a phrase embraced by school-aged kids and embarrassing uncles the world over, is now being used to settle a decades-long debate about what happens when you crack your knuckles.
In a new study published April 15 in PLOS ONE, an international team of researchers led by the University of Alberta used MRI video to determine what happens inside finger joints to cause the distinctive popping sounds heard when cracking knuckles. For the first time, they observed that the cause is a cavity forming rapidly inside the joint.
"We ...
2015-04-15
Faster increases in life expectancy do not necessarily produce faster population aging, according to new research published in the journal PLOS ONE. This counterintuitive finding was the result of applying new measures of aging developed at IIASA to future population projections for Europe up to the year 2050.
"Age can be measured as the time already lived or it can be adjusted taking into account the time left to live. If you don't consider people old just because they reached age 65 but instead take into account how long they have left to live, then the faster the ...
2015-04-15
The ability to make a Lower Paleolithic hand axe depends on complex cognitive control by the prefrontal cortex, including the "central executive" function of working memory, a new study finds.
PLOS ONE published the results, which knock another chip off theories that Stone Age hand axes are simple tools that don't involve higher-order executive function of the brain.
"For the first time, we've showed a relationship between the degree of prefrontal brain activity, the ability to make technological judgments, and success in actually making stone tools," says Dietrich ...
2015-04-15
BALTIMORE, MD, April 15, 2015 - Personal Genome Diagnostics, Inc. (PGDx), a provider of advanced cancer genome analysis and testing services, today announced the publication of a landmark study showing that many of the genetic alterations identified using tumor-only sequencing are not actually associated with the cancer, but instead reflect inherited germline mutations already present in the normal cells of the individual. The study is in the April 15 edition of Science Translational Medicine1 and was conducted by PGDx scientists working in collaboration with company co-founders ...
2015-04-15
A study by Johns Hopkins scientists strongly suggests that sequencing tumor genomes for clues to genetic changes might misdirect treatment in nearly half of all patients unless it is compared first to a genetic readout of their noncancerous tissue.
The investigators at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center say their analysis of more than 800 cancer patients' sequencing data, which was generated by Personal Genome Diagnostics Inc., a company co-founded by the researchers, shows that without such comparisons, attempts to individualize cancer therapy may be inappropriate ...
2015-04-15
How fast is online learning evolving? Are wind turbines a promising investment? And how long before a cheap hoverboard makes it to market?
Attempting to answer such questions requires knowing something about the rate at which a technology is improving. Now engineers at MIT have devised a formula for estimating how fast a technology is advancing, based on information gleaned from relevant patents.
The researchers determined the improvement rates of 28 different technologies, including solar photovoltaics, 3-D printing, fuel-cell technology, and genome sequencing. They ...
2015-04-15
NEW YORK (April 15, 2015) -- Technological advances are enabling scientists to sequence the genomes of cancer tumors, revealing a detailed portrait of genetic mutations that drive these diseases. But genomic studies are only one piece of the puzzle that is precision medicine, a Weill Cornell Medical College researcher writes in Nature. In order to realize the promise of this field, there needs to be an increased focus on creating robust clinical databases that include medical histories from patients around the country, which physicians can then use along with genomic data ...
2015-04-15
The long-forecasted El Niño event of 2014/15 did not meet expectations. On March 5, 2015, the National Weather Service finally declared a "weak" event arriving several months later than expected, formally dashing predictions that we would see a major event on par with the monster El Niño of 1997/98 that would bring much-needed rain to California and other western states. Now, a team of researchers believes that they know why this year's event--and others like it--didn't live up to the hype.
A new study published online April 13, 2015, in the journal Nature ...
2015-04-15
Neuroscientists at NYU Langone Medical Center have discovered how the powerful brain hormone oxytocin acts on individual brain cells to prompt specific social behaviors - findings that could lead to a better understanding of how oxytocin and other hormones could be used to treat behavioral problems resulting from disease or trauma to the brain. The findings are to be published in the journal Nature online April 15.
Until now, researchers say oxytocin -- sometimes called the "pleasure hormone" -- has been better known for its role in inducing sexual attraction and orgasm, ...
2015-04-15
Previous studies have suggested that pulses of icebergs may have caused cycles of abrupt climate change during the last glacial period by introducing fresh water to the surface of the ocean and changing ocean currents, which are known to play a dominant role in the climate of many of Earth's regions.
However, new findings by scientists at Cardiff University present a contradictory narrative and suggest that icebergs generally arrived too late to trigger marked cooling across the North Atlantic.
Abrupt climate change, characterised by transitions between warm and cold ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Frog uses different strategies to escape ground, air predators
To escape danger, frogs move away from snakes, toward bats
