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The Anecdotal History of Discussing Plant Aposematic Coloration

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Defensive (anti-herbivory) Coloration in Land Plants

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Abstract

After it became clear to me in February 1996, following compelling evidence in the field that aposematic coloration characterizes many thorny, spiny and prickly plants, I conducted a thorough BIOSIS database search of “aposematism in plants” that yielded nothing. In those pre-Google and Google Scholar days it appeared to be a totally new issue. There were, however, several papers published since the 1960s mentioning toxic plant aposematism via visual and olfactory signals, but they were data-base-wise transparent and I have found them with time, following my very extensive library work. Concerning visual aposematism of thorny, spiny and prickly plants is was indeed a new hypothesis. Twenty years of thorough library study resulted in a very short pre-year-2000 list of authors who discussed visual aposematism (usually very briefly) and only concerning poisonous plants (Cook et al. 1971; Hinton 1973; Harper 1977; Wiens 1978; Rothschild 1972, 1980, 1986; Harborne 1982; Williamson 1982; Knight and Siegfried 1983; Smith 1986; Lee et al. 1987; Givnish 1990; Tuomi and Augner 1993). Moreover, several of these references (Knight and Siegfried 1983; Smith 1986; Lee et al. 1987), while discussing the theoretical possibility of aposematic signaling by toxic plants, dismissed the existence/operation of aposematic coloration in the plants they studied. While these few early mentions of visual aposematism in plants referred to poisonous ones, in papers published since 2001 more attention was given to visual aposematism of thorny, spiny and prickly ones (Lev-Yadun 2001, 2003a, b, 2006a, 2009a, b, c, 2011, 2014a; Midgley et al. 2001; Midgley 2004; Lev-Yadun and Ne’eman 2004, 2006; Rubino and McCarthy 2004; Ruxton et al. 2004; Speed and Ruxton 2005; Halpern et al. 2007a, b, 2011; Lev-Yadun and Halpern 2008; Fadzly et al. 2009; Lee and Gould 2009; Lev-Yadun and Gould 2009; Lev-Yadun et al. 2009a; Nassar and Lev-Yadun 2009; Ronel et al. 2009, 2010; Schaefer and Ruxton 2011; Ronel and Lev-Yadun 2012; Kavanagh et al. 2016; Midgley et al. 2016) and less attention to poisonous ones (Gould 2004; Lev-Yadun and Ne’eman 2004; Hill 2006; Lev-Yadun 2006a, 2009a, 2014a, d; Lev-Yadun and Gould 2007, 2009; Archetti 2009b; Archetti et al. 2009a; Lev-Yadun and Holopainen 2009; Cooney et al. 2012; Gerchman et al. 2012; Maskato et al. 2014; Hughes and Lev-Yadun 2015).

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  1. Department of Biology & Environment, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Haifa – Oranim, Tivon, Israel

    Simcha Lev-Yadun

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Lev-Yadun, S. (2016). The Anecdotal History of Discussing Plant Aposematic Coloration. In: Defensive (anti-herbivory) Coloration in Land Plants. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42096-7_25

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