Aphids Playing Possum – Defensive or Mutualistic Response?

Paper presents the phenomenon of thanatosis or death-feigning in selected aphids species. This specific reaction was predominantly analysed on the example of aphid subfamily Lachninae. Individuals of this group were used in experiments, during which a thanatotic response was induced with various results. The response differed from prolonged thanatosis, lasting for several minutes (Eulachnus rileyi), through shrinking behaviour (e. g. in Stomaphis graffii) to non-responsive species such as Cinara (Schizolachnus) pineti. The large interspecies variation of observed responses can be linked to other defensive mechanisms existing in the studied species, as well as to their mutualistic relationship with ants. The behaviour of shrinking is hypothesized to be the mutualistic response, developed from thanatosis, and being adapted to transportation by ant workers.

• Publication year

  2018

• Venue

  Journal of insect behavior

• Publication date

  2018-01-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1007/s10905-018-9662-4PMID 29527095PMCID 5834575
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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