The Shared and Separate Roles of Aposematic (Warning) Coloration and the Co-evolution Hypothesis in Defending Autumn Leaves

  • Simcha Lev-Yadun
Chapter
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Abstract

Originally, the co-evolutionary hypothesis addressed similarly both red and yellow autumn leaves (Archetti 2000; Hamilton and Brown 2001; Archetti and Brown 2004). However, with the general understanding that yellow leaves usually attract aphids rather than repelling them (Holopainen and Peltonen 2002; Wilkinson et al. 2002; Chittka and Döring 2007; Archetti et al. 2009a; Döring et al. 2009; Holopainen et al. 2009), the second generation of the co-evolutionary hypothesis was very restricted concerning yellow leaves, and focused mostly on red autumn leaves when aphids are concerned (Archetti et al. 2009a). The updated version of the co-evolutionary hypothesis that also includes aposematism, while not neglecting physiology (Archetti et al. 2009a), posited that with red autumn coloration, trees visually signal to all types of insects (including aphids) that migrate to the trees in autumn, about their chemical defense, lower nutritional quality, approaching leaf fall, that they have unsuitable color for insect camouflage, and possibly still unknown other characters that would result in a lower fitness in the attacking insects. In addition, yellow leaves visually signal the same defensive combination to various invertebrate herbivores, except for many aphids. When the yellow autumn leaves belong to toxic taxa, even yellow leaves may signal and even to aphids, that they are chemically defended. The visual signaling of colorful autumn leaves is probably supplemented by an olfactory one (e.g., Holopainen 2008; Blande et al. 2010; Holopainen et al. 2010), but that issue has not been studied yet on a broad scale and deserves much more research attention. The fact that there are good physiological measurements of significant volatile release from yellow autumn leaves (e.g., Keskitalo et al. 2005) supports the possibility of the simultaneous operation of olfactory, along with visual aposematism by these leaves.

Keywords

Chemical Defense Aphid Species Yellow Leaf Lower Fitness Simultaneous Operation 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  • Simcha Lev-Yadun
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of Biology & Environment, Faculty of Natural SciencesUniversity of Haifa – OranimTivonIsrael

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