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How Did That Zebra get Away?

The competition between a predator and its prey is one of the most fundamental relationships in nature. It is essential for the survival of individuals and species and it is ubiquitous. Virtually every species of animal on the planet is either predator, prey or both. Study of the interaction between predators and prey has allowed researchers to gain many new and important insights into how the natural world functions.

A simple question researchers can ask is, how do the prey get away? Prey are usually smaller and weaker than those that hunt them yet they manage to escape frequently enough that their species survive. Like many simple questions, this one doesn’t have a simple answer.

One of the factors that allows prey to survive is their ability to detect the presence of the predator before it’s too late to get away. It may also be important for the prey to be able to detect the location and direction of the predator during the chase so it can maneuver away from the predator’s path. The problem of detection focuses attention on how both predator and prey receive sensory information from the environment.

Dr. David Yager works with mantises and other insects and his research is a fine example of how examining the sensory systems of prey species can be an immensely fruitful area of study. Dr. Yager’s research takes into account an exceptionally wide range of factors involved in the processing of sensory information that allows mantises to escape from their predators, which are often bats. Some of his research involves long-term evolutionary studies that involve different species and subspecies from all over the world. In addition, Dr. Yager works at the neurophysiological level to examine changes that take place within the central nervous system as a whole and within individual neurons. He also combines these two strands of research with experimental studies that focus on individual escape behavior.

The competition between predator and prey involves a complex interplay of move and countermove between increasingly refined sensory systems that has played out over eons through the evolution of species. Dr. Yager’s laboratory is one of only two or three in the world that explores this process in such a comprehensive manner with regard to the evolution of insect auditory systems.