生物谷报道：研究人员在6月4日的《生物学快报》（Biology Letters）网络版上报告了一项研究成果褶边蜗牛（Nucella lamellosa）能够嗅出自己的天敌——红蟹——的气味，从而生长出更厚的外壳。通常认为，如果是一个不熟悉的敌人，例如欧洲绿蟹，褶边蜗牛便不能辨别出前者的气味，因此也就不会加固自己的铠甲。然而科学家最近发现，蜗牛可能具有联想的本领，他们注意到，如果一种气味混合了熟悉的天敌和新的味道，蜗牛将迅速激活自己的防御体系——当它们碰到绿蟹时便是这样。（生物谷www.bioon.com）
生物谷推荐原始出处：
Biology Letters，10.1098/rsbl.2008.0204，Timothy C. Edgell, Christopher J. Neufeld
Experimental evidence for latent developmental plasticity: intertidal whelks respond to a native but not an introduced predator
Timothy C. Edgell1, 2, Christopher J. Neufeld1, 2
1 Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre, Bamfield, BC, Canada V0R 1B0
2Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alb. Canada T6G 2E9
Animals with highly inducible traits may show no inducible response when exposed to a related but wholly novel cue. This appears to be true for the intertidal whelk Nucella lamellosa faced with a voracious introduced predator. In the laboratory, we exposed whelks to effluent from two species of predatory crab, the native red rock crab Cancer productus and the invasive European green crab Carcinus maenas. Nucella and Cancer have a long shared history in the northeast Pacific, whereas potential interaction with Carcinus began here less than 10 years ago. Although Nucella responded adaptively to Cancer effluent by increasing shell thickness and decreasing somatic growth, there was no such response to Carcinus. Furthermore, thicker shelled Nucella were less likely to be eaten by Carcinus. Because Nucella produces thicker shells when exposed to Cancer cues, its ability to respond similarly to Carcinus depends only on the coupling of the Carcinus cue to the existing developmental pathways for adaptive changes in shell form. Such coupling of latent plasticity to a novel cue—via genetic changes or associative learning—could explain many cases of rapid phenotypic change following a sudden shift in the environment.
