The predator ignored ignorant prey

Rare traits are always maintained in populations because predators can detect common characteristics more easily. Researchers have recently discovered that birds will eat newts with common traits of populations, even if the appearance of a specific trait is different from the behavior. This also varies accordingly.

Benjamin Fitzpatrick of the University of Tennessee collaborated with Kim Shook and Reuben Izally in the study of the impact of the prominence of back stripes in a newts group on the hunting behavior of blue jays . He said: 'Maintaining a variation is a classic paradox in evolution because both selection and drift tend to remove that variation from the population. If some form of variation is beneficial, such as being more difficult to detect, it will replace all other variants. Similarly, random drift itself can cause the disappearance of other traits except for a trait when there are no physical differences. Therefore, there must definitely be benefits to allow other traits to be maintained. '

On the picture are two newts.(Photo: Fitzpatrick et al., BMC Ecology)

The authors placed a sample of newts to carry food in a field for 6 days, those with dorsal stripes outperformed those without stripes with a ratio of 9: 1 or vice versa. During the time of the experiment, the number of newts became equal. Blue jays tend to attack the most prominent newts during the first 6 days. According to Fitzpatrick, 'we believe that different colors show different ways of hiding themselves in the forest. Finding what is mysterious requires both concentration and practice. Predators focus on finding striped newts that may not notice un stripes'.

Fitzpatrick concludes: 'Therefore, the maintenance of color distortions in terrestrial newts can be explained by the oldest but also most obvious hypothesis - the benefits of rare forms increase by Predators tend not to find rare prey '.

References
Fitzpatrick et al.Frequency-dependent selection by promotes wild birds polymorphism in model salamanders.BMC Ecology, 2009;9 (1): 12 DOI: 10.1186 / 1472-6785-9-12