Death feigning is considered to be an adaptive anti-predator behavior. Previous studies on Tribolium castaneum have shown that prey which death feign have a fitness advantage over those that do not when using a jumping spider as the predator. Whether these effects are repeatable across species or whether they can be seen in nature is, however, unknown. Therefore, the present study involved two experiments: 1) divergent artificial selection for the duration of death feigning using a related species T. freemani as prey and a predatory bug as predator, demonstrating that previous results are repeatable across both prey and predator species, and 2) comparison of the death-feigning duration of T. castaneum populations collected from field sites with and without predatory bugs. In the first experiment, T. freemani adults from established selection regimes with longer durations of death feigning had higher survival rates and longer latency to being preyed on when they were placed with predatory bugs than the adults from regimes selected for shorter durations of death feigning. As a result, the adaptive significance of death-feigning behavior was demonstrated in another prey-predator system. In the second experiment, wild T. castaneum beetles from populations with predators feigned death longer than wild beetles from predator- free populations. Combining the results from these two experiments with those from previous studies provided strong evidence that predators drive the evolution of longer death feigning.

中文翻译：

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假死作为一种适应性的反捕食者行为：其从人工选择和自然种群进化而来的进一步证据


假死被认为是一种适应性的反捕食者行为。先前对赤拟谷盗的研究表明，当使用跳蛛作为捕食者时，假死的猎物比那些没有假死的猎物具有适应性优势。然而，这些效应是否在物种之间可重复，或者它们是否可以在自然界中看到，目前尚不清楚。因此，本研究涉及两个实验：1）使用相关物种 T. freemani 作为猎物和捕食性昆虫作为捕食者，对假死持续时间进行不同的人工选择，证明先前的结果在猎物和捕食者物种中都是可重复的，并且2)比较从有和没有捕食性蝽的野外地点收集的赤蝽种群的假死持续时间。在第一个实验中，与来自较短假死持续时间的选择方案中选择的成虫相比，来自已建立的假死持续时间较长的选择方案的弗里马尼成虫在与捕食性昆虫一起放置时具有更高的存活率和更长的潜伏期。结果，假死行为的适应性意义在另一个猎物-捕食者系统中得到了证明。在第二个实验中，来自有捕食者种群的野生栗甲虫假死的时间比来自无捕食者种群的野生甲虫的时间更长。将这两个实验的结果与之前的研究结果相结合，提供了强有力的证据，证明捕食者推动了更长时间假死的进化。