{"id":989,"date":"2023-02-15T15:06:57","date_gmt":"2023-02-15T15:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/biodiversity\/?post_type=seminar&#038;p=989"},"modified":"2023-02-15T18:51:29","modified_gmt":"2023-02-15T18:51:29","slug":"989","status":"publish","type":"seminar","link":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/biodiversity\/?seminar=989","title":{"rendered":"<strong>The price of safety \u2013 costs and comparisons in chemical defense<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/emilyburdfieldsteel.com\/\">Asst. Prof Emily Burdfield-Steel<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Many organisms use chemical defenses to deter would-be predators. We often think of chemical defenses as highly toxic \u2013 such as the alkaloids of poison dart frogs. However, many species have relatively weak chemical defenses, in some cases only rendering the organisms \u201cunpalatable\u201d \u2013 aka bad tasting. Why do such weak defenses persist? I will first discuss our experimental work demonstrating the costs of producing chemical defenses in the wood tiger moth. I will then discuss how predator decision making can shape communities of chemically defended prey \u2013 and that even weak defenses may be useful as long as they render you worse than the competition. Finally, I will use predator-prey interactions as a case-study to demonstrate the potential of marketing and human-consumer theory in helping us bridge the gap from laboratory experiments to complex community dynamics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":990,"menu_order":0,"template":"","class_list":["post-989","seminar","type-seminar","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"speaker":"Asst. Professor Emily Burdfield-Steel","speakers_institution":"University of Amsterdam","host":"St Andrews","date_and_time":"2023-02-20 13:00:57","location":"Dyers Brae Seminar Room and Teams","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/biodiversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/seminar\/989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/biodiversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/seminar"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/biodiversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/seminar"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/biodiversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/biodiversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biology.st-andrews.ac.uk\/biodiversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}