Скачать или смотреть Social or Stinky? How Animal Defenses Evolve

When people see a skunk, the reaction usually is "Eww," but when they see a group of meerkats peering around, they often think "Aww."

Why some animals use noxious scents while others live in social groups to defend themselves against predators is the question that biologists Theodore Stankowich of Long Beach State University and Tim Caro of UC Davis sought to answer through a comprehensive analysis of predator-prey interactions among carnivorous mammals and birds of prey.

Their results, "Ecological Drivers of Antipredator Defenses in Carnivores," appears in the online edition of the journal Evolution.

"The idea is that we're trying to explain why certain antipredator traits evolved in some species but not others," said Stankowich, an assistant professor of biological sciences who noted this study not only explains why skunks are stinky and why banded mongooses live in groups but also breaks new ground in the methodology of estimating predation risks.

The researchers collected data on 181 species of carnivores, a group in which many species are small and under threat from other members of their guild. They ran a comparison of every possible predator-prey combination, correcting for a variety of natural history factors, to create a potential risk value that estimates the strength of natural selection due to predation from birds and other mammals.

For more information on this study visit: http://urd.csulb.edu/press-release/st...