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Kandori I, Hiramatsu M, Soda M, Nakashima S, Funami S, Yokoi T, Tsuchihara K, Papaj DR. Long horns protect Hestina japonica butterfly larvae from their natural enemies. Sci Rep 2022; 12:2835. [PMID: 35181732 PMCID: PMC8857287 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-06770-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/13/2021] [Accepted: 02/02/2022] [Indexed: 11/10/2022] Open
Abstract
Animals sometimes have prominent projections on or near their heads serving diverse functions such as male combat, mate attraction, digging, capturing prey, sensing or defence against predators. Some butterfly larvae possess a pair of long frontal projections; however, the function of those projections is not well known. Hestina japonica butterfly larvae have a pair of long hard projections on their heads (i.e., horns). Here we hypothesized that they use these horns to protect themselves from natural enemies (i.e., predators and parasitoids). Field surveys revealed that the primary natural enemies of H. japonica larvae were Polistes wasps. Cage experiments revealed that larvae with horns intact and larvae with horns removed and fitted with horns of other individuals succeeded in defending themselves against attacks of Polistes wasps significantly more often than larvae with horns removed. We discuss that the horns counter the paper wasps’ hunting strategy of first biting the larvae’s ‘necks’ and note that horns evolved repeatedly only within the Nymphalidae in a phylogeny of the Lepidoptera. This is the first demonstration that arthropods use head projections for physical defence against predators.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ikuo Kandori
- Faculty of Agriculture, Kindai University, Nara, 631-8505, Japan.
| | - Mamoru Hiramatsu
- Faculty of Agriculture, Kindai University, Nara, 631-8505, Japan
| | - Minako Soda
- Faculty of Agriculture, Kindai University, Nara, 631-8505, Japan
| | - Shinya Nakashima
- Faculty of Agriculture, Kindai University, Nara, 631-8505, Japan
| | - Shun Funami
- Faculty of Agriculture, Kindai University, Nara, 631-8505, Japan
| | - Tomoyuki Yokoi
- Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8572, Japan
| | - Kazuko Tsuchihara
- Department of Information Science, Tohoku Gakuin University, Sendai, Miyagi, 981-3193, Japan
| | - Daniel R Papaj
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA
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Hayashi M, Ohba SY. Mouth morphology of the diving beetle Hyphydrus japonicus (Dytiscidae: Hydroporinae) is specialized for predation on seed shrimps. Biol J Linn Soc Lond 2018. [DOI: 10.1093/biolinnean/bly113] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/01/2023]
Affiliation(s)
| | - Shin-Ya Ohba
- Biological Laboratory, Faculty of Education, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan
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