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      Complex Feeding Tracks of the Sessile Herbivorous Insect Ophiomyia maura as a Function of the Defense against Insect Parasitoids

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      1 , * , 2
      PLoS ONE
      Public Library of Science

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          Abstract

          Because insect herbivores generally suffer from high mortality due to their natural enemies, reducing the risk of being located by natural enemies is of critical importance for them, forcing them to develop a variety of defensive measures. Larvae of leaf-mining insects lead a sedentary life inside a leaf and make conspicuous feeding tracks called mines, exposing themselves to the potential risk of parasitism. We investigated the defense strategy of the linear leafminer Ophiomyia maura Meigen (Diptera: Agromyzidae), by focusing on its mining patterns. We examined whether the leafminer could reduce the risk of being parasitized (1) by making cross structures in the inner area of a leaf to deter parasitoids from tracking the mines due to complex pathways, and (2) by mining along the edge of a leaf to hinder visually searching parasitoids from finding mined leaves due to effective background matching of the mined leaves among intact leaves. We quantified fractal dimension as mine complexity and area of mine in the inner area of the leaf as interior mine density for each sample mine, and analyzed whether these mine traits affected the susceptibility of O. maura to parasitism. Our results have shown that an increase in mine complexity with the development of occupying larvae decreases the probability of being parasitized, while interior mine density has no influence on parasitism. These results suggest that the larval development increases the host defense ability through increasing mine complexity. Thus the feeding pattern of these sessile insects has a defensive function by reducing the risk of parasitism.

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          Most cited references114

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          The Fractal Geometry of Nature

          Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, and lightning does not travel in a straight line. The complexity of nature's shapes differs in kind, not merely degree, from that of the shapes of ordinary geometry, the geometry of fractal shapes. <br><br>Now that the field has expanded greatly with many active researchers, Mandelbrot presents the definitive overview of the origins of his ideas and their new applications. <i>The Fractal Geometry of Nature</i> is based on his highly acclaimed earlier work, but has much broader and deeper coverage and more extensive illustrations.
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            Disruptive coloration and background pattern matching.

            Effective camouflage renders a target indistinguishable from irrelevant background objects. Two interrelated but logically distinct mechanisms for this are background pattern matching (crypsis) and disruptive coloration: in the former, the animal's colours are a random sample of the background; in the latter, bold contrasting colours on the animal's periphery break up its outline. The latter has long been proposed as an explanation for some apparently conspicuous coloration in animals, and is standard textbook material. Surprisingly, only one quantitative test of the theory exists, and one experimental test of its effectiveness against non-human predators. Here we test two key predictions: that patterns on the body's outline should be particularly effective in promoting concealment and that highly contrasting colours should enhance this disruptive effect. Artificial moth-like targets were exposed to bird predation in the field, with the experimental colour patterns on the 'wings' and a dead mealworm as the edible 'body'. Survival analysis supported the predictions, indicating that disruptive coloration is an effective means of camouflage, above and beyond background pattern matching.
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              Defining disruptive coloration and distinguishing its functions.

              Disruptive coloration breaks up the shape and destroys the outline of an object, hindering detection. The principle was first suggested approximately a century ago, but, although research has significantly increased, the field remains conceptually unstructured and no unambiguous definition exists. This has resulted in variable use of the term, making it difficult to formulate testable hypotheses that are comparable between studies, slowing down advancement in this field. Related to this, a range of studies do not effectively distinguish between disruption and other forms of camouflage. Here, we give a formal definition of disruptive coloration, reorganize a range of sub-principles involved in camouflage and argue that five in particular are specifically related to disruption: differential blending; maximum disruptive contrast; disruption of surface through false edges; disruptive marginal patterns; and coincident disruptive coloration. We discuss how disruptive coloration can be optimized, how it can relate to other forms of camouflage markings and where future work is particularly needed.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, USA )
                1932-6203
                2012
                29 February 2012
                : 7
                : 2
                : e32594
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Division of Theoretical Biology, National Institute for Basic Biology, Okazaki, Aichi, Japan
                [2 ]Institute of Biological Control, Faculty of Agriculture, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan
                Netherlands Institute of Ecology, Netherlands
                Author notes

                Conceived and designed the experiments: YA TU. Performed the experiments: YA. Analyzed the data: YA TU. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: YA. Wrote the paper: YA TU.

                [¤a]

                Current address: Laboratory of Forest Protection, Graduate School of Bioagricultural Sciences, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan

                [¤b]

                Current address: Institute of Biological Control, Faculty of Agriculture, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan

                Article
                PONE-D-11-18213
                10.1371/journal.pone.0032594
                3290576
                22393419
                dc6faa71-8f58-427d-ac69-fdf4148fdeb3
                Ayabe, Ueno. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
                History
                : 15 September 2011
                : 30 January 2012
                Page count
                Pages: 8
                Categories
                Research Article
                Biology
                Ecology
                Community Ecology
                Evolutionary Biology

                Uncategorized
                Uncategorized

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