Meeting Abstract
Many organisms use defensive displays to escape predators. Such displays have both visual and behavioral components that operate in concert. A great example is the startling display of mountain katydids. There have been two hypotheses put forward to explain how defensive displays evolve, the startle-first hypothesis and the defense-first hypothesis. The startle-first hypothesis proposes that the behavioral component evolves first, and is subsequently complemented with a visual component. Alternatively, the defense-first hypothesis proposes that the visual component of the deimatic display evolves first, and is then concealed. In our study, we evaluated these two hypotheses by investigating the evolution of the visual and behavioral components of a deimatic display in leaf-footed bugs (Insecta: Hemiptera: Coreidae). Preliminary phylogenetic comparative analyses suggest that the behavioral component of the deimatic display predates the morphological component. Moreover, the morphological component has independently evolved multiple times and larger species are more likely to possess both components.
