Abstract
Ecological communities typically consist of hundreds of species that interact in many intricate ways. Predicting community responses to environmental change is challenging, as environmental impact on one species often has cascading effects on other species within a network. Quantifying variation in traits known to influence species interactions is crucial to improve our ability to predict community composition, however, such trait data is often difficult to obtain for whole communities. Focusing on camouflage traits, I aim to develop a quantitative framework to study predator-prey interactions of whole communities. Camouflage traits are well-known to influence encounter rate between species while being strongly depend on species-specific perception as well as the sensory environment. Consequently, camouflage traits can be separately quantified and modelled for each specific interaction and used to predict how communities respond to environmental change. Adult Lepidopteran moths and their multi-species predator community are an ideal system to develop this predictive framework. At night, bats hunt for moths using ultrasound. During the day, songbirds search visually for moths resting on trees. In response to these simultaneous selection pressures, many moths have evolved specialized scales on their body and wings, which provides them with acoustic camouflage through absorption of echolocation calls and visual camouflage through background pattern matching. In the proposed research I will: 1) assess covariance in visual patterning and acoustic absorption of body and wing scales of moths; 2) use this data to model interaction-specific and environment-dependent camouflage across the visual and acoustic domain; and 3)develop a camouflage-trait-database to predict Lepidoptera community shifts in response to environmental change. In fundamental terms, the expected outcome will help to understand how predators influence prey abundance based on sensory traits. On an applied, level, such knowledge can ultimately inform ecological managers on best-practices for improving biodiversity or controlling pests.
Netherlands