Summary: Heiling and Herberstein (2004)

Hi fellow science lovers!

My weekly blog is going to be based on all things involving COEVOLUTION; A topic that never ceases to interest me with eye-opening discoveries.

For people who don’t know—coevolution is defined as “…the evolution of two or more interdependent species, each adapting to changes in the other…” – basically meaning that one species evolves and the other follows to ‘even up the playing field’ so to speak.

This week whilst researching I came across this little gem: Thomisus spectabilis (Australian crab spiders) evolved to mimic flower colour signals in order to lure pollinating insects. The really interesting part to this story is the Australian native bee (Austroplebia australis) has coevolved to avoid landing on flowers occupied by the predator! When offered the choice between two white daisies, one occupied by a crab spider; the native bees would land on the vacant flower more often, displaying an anti-predatory response to avoid the flower occupied by the predator (Heiling and Herberstein, 2004)

References:

Definition: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/_/dict.aspx?rd=1&word=coevolution

Journal Article: Heiling, A. & Herberstein, M. 2004. Predator–prey coevolution: Australian native bees avoid their spider predators. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 271, S196-S198.

Photo: http://mq.edu.au/newsroom/2013/12/17/australia-a-hot-spot-for-flora-and-fauna-deception/