Aposematism - experimental evidence?
June 7, 1999
From: Russell Wyeth
Hello everyone,
We are working on experimentally proving that bright slugs are so coloured as warning to predators that they taste bad (aposematic). Are there thoughts on some visual predators which will sample and then spit out nudibranchs? We have thought of large shrimp, some crab species, and fish such as kelp greenling and maybe some sculpins... Our work is on northeast pacific animals, but I'd welcome thoughts from anywhere.
Cheers,
Russell Wyeth
University of Washington
Department of Zoology
Box 351800
Seattle, WA 98195-1800
rwyeth@u.washington.edu
Wyeth, R., 1999 (Jun 7) Aposematism - experimental evidence?. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/926Dear Russell,
There is quite a bit about aposematism on the site. Have a look at this page, above and below your message) and have a look at the Defence topics in the General Topics list. Unfortunately there is not much direct experimental work that has been done which goes beyond the pioneering work of Crossland who 90 years ago was throwing bits of chromodorids to fish off his houseboat in the Sudanese Red Sea!
I'm off to Italy today so won't be able to get back to your message for a couple of weeks. Also perhaps you would like to add some information about your research etc for the Participants Page.
Best wishes,
Bill Rudman.
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