Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Go into most Canadian backyards and you are likely to see numerous examples of apparently protective colour patterns: moths that resemble their backgrounds, warningly-coloured ladybugs, and harmless hoverflies that gain protection by resembling stinging wasps or bees. These phenomena have played a unique role in shaping the way both academics and the general public think about evolutionary processes. Thus, the theory of mimicry has been described as "perhaps the greatest post-Darwinian application of natural selection" (Fisher 1958), while documentaries regularly showcase adaptation by reference to exquisite examples of protective coloration. Over the last century, scientists have come to understand precisely how particular defensive traits serve to protect individuals from being eaten. However, a more fundamental question relates to the diversity of anti-predator adaptations themselves: why do some species evolve one form of defence, while other species evolve another? In this research program we will test - using field experiments, comparative analyses and evolving artificial life - a series of fundamental hypotheses concerning the conditions that govern the type of anti-predator strategy that evolves in a given species. We will also develop mathematical models that recognize the possibility that the defence that evolves in one species influences the nature of the defence that evolves in other species, and we shall test these insights by quantifying the distribution of different defensive strategies in a range of natural food webs. Finally, although the need to avoid predators has traditionally been considered in isolation from other selective forces, we will ask whether the evolved defence influences an organism's rate of ageing. Do palatable species senesce more rapidly than unpalatable species? Nobody knows, but the answer not only provides a test of evolutionary theories of ageing, but also helps to set the study of anti-predator adaptation in a broader life-history context. This research is not about adding footnotes, but testing "big picture" hypotheses as to how and why the diversity of anti-predator adaptations is generated and maintained.