In 1879, Fritz Müller hypothesized that mimetic resemblance in which defended prey display the same warning signal would share the costs of predator education. Although Müller argued that predators would need to ingest a fixed number of prey with a given visual signal when learning to avoid unpalatable prey, this assumption lacks empirical support. We report an experiment which shows that, as t...

This paper constitutes a sequel to our previous work focused on investigating cooperative behaviors, adaptive learning and on-line interaction towards the generation of entertainment in computer games. A human-verified metric of interest (i.e. player entertainment) of predator/prey games and a neuroevolution on-line learning (i.e. during play) approach are used to serve this purpose. Experiment...

BACKGROUND During the last decades, attempts have been made to understand the molecular epidemiology of Sarcoptes scabiei, and to detect and clarify the differences between isolates from different hosts and geographic regions. Two main phenomena have been described: (i) host-taxon derived-Sarcoptes mite infection in European wild animals (revealing the presence of three separate clusters, namel...

Abstract. In this paper, a predator-prey-disease model with immune response in the infected prey is formulated. The basic reproduction number of the within-host model is defined and it is found that there are three equilibria: extinction equilibrium, infection-free equilibrium and infection-persistent equilibrium. The stabilities of these equilibria are completely determined by the reproduction...

The life cycle of the cestode Echinococcus multilocularis primarily involves canids and small mammals (rodents, lagomorphs) as definitive and intermediate hosts, respectively. Several surveys have identified marked temporal and geographical variations at different scales in the parasite's prevalence in both types of hosts, suggesting variations in the biological and ecological factors that cont...

1. Environmental cues associated with prey are known to increase predator foraging efficiency. Ladybird larvae are major predators of aphids. The sugary excretion of aphids (honeydew) has been proposed to serve as a prey-associated cue for ladybird larvae. 2. Ladybird larvae are regularly found on the ground moving between plants or after falling off plants. The use of prey-associated cues woul...

Orius insidiosus (Say) and O. pumilio (Champion) were confirmed to be sympatric in north central Florida as the major predators of the Florida flower thrips, Frankliniella bispinosa (Morgan), on flowers of Queen Anne's lace, Daucus carota L. and false Queen Anne's lace, Ammi majus L. F. bispinosa was the predominant thrips observed on both flowers but colonized D. carota to a greater extent an...

Camouflage is perhaps the most widespread defence against predators in nature and an active area of interdisciplinary research. Recent work has aimed to understand what camouflage types exist (e.g. background matching, disruptive, and distractive patterns) and their effectiveness. However, work has almost exclusively focused on the efficacy of these strategies in preventing initial detection, d...

A generic predator/prey pursuit scenario is used to validate a common learning approach using Wilson’s eXtended Learning Classifier System (XCS). The predators, having only local information, should independently learn and act while at the same time they are urged to collaborate and to capture the prey. Since learning from scratch is often a time consuming process, the common learning approach,...