Barking Dogs Never Bite: Bluffing behaviour in dice snakes (Natrix tessellata)
2022
Autori:
Bjelica, VukašinAnđelković, Marko
Lakušić, Margareta
Maričić, Marko
Arsovski, Dragan
Tomović, Ljiljana
Golubović, Ana
Ostala autorstva
Crnobrnja-Isailović, JelkaVukov, Tanja
Vučić, Tijana
Tomović, Ljiljana
Tip dokumenta:
Konferencijski prilog (Objavljena verzija)
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© 2022 Institute for Biological Research "Siniša Stanković" – National Institute of Republic of Serbia, University of Belgrade
Metapodaci
Prikaz svih podataka o dokumentuApstrakt:
Prey animals have a wide array of strategies that they use to avoid or deter predators. In some cases, these strategies include warding off a predator attack by advertising strong chemical defences, such as venom, or by mimicking sympatric species, which do possess such defences (i.e. bluffing/mimicry). Dice snakes are nonvenemous natricine snakes that often live in sympatry with vipers. These snakes also have an ample arsenal of antipredator behavioural displays that include bluffing, characterized by hissing (auditory mimicry) with head flattening and fake strikes (visual mimicry). We measured the occurrence of bluffing displays in four different localities; on Golem Grad Island and in Konjsko (North Macedonia), where dice snakes share their habitat with nose-horned vipers (Vipera mmodytes) while in the other two localities, Mal Grad Island (Albania) and Pančevački rit Serbia), vipers are not present. We analysed the effect of locality, size (snout to vent length) nd sex on occurrence of bluffing as an antipredator strategy. Our results show that the ccurrence of bluffing was significantly affected by locality and body size. Notably, in the two localities where dice snakes share the same habitat with vipers the occurrence of bluffing displays is significantly higher than in the two localities where vipers are not present. This possibly indicates a case of Batesian mimicry, reported for the first time in dice snakes. Additionaly, our analysis shows that the predicted probabilities of the occurrence of bluffing increased with size. This seems intuitive, as bluffing behaviours should have a certain size threshold when they become effective, since small snakes can be easily consumed.
U:
- Crnobrnja-Isailović J, Vukov T, Vučić T, Tomović Lj, editors. Program and Book of Abstracts: the 21st European Congress of Herpetology; 2022 Sep 5-9; Belgrade, Serbia. Belgrade: Institute for Biological Research "Siniša Stanković"– National Institute of Republic of Serbia, University of Belgrade; 2022. p. 117.