SynthesisProceedings. Biological sciences2022
The exploitation of sexual signals by predators: a meta-analysis.
Synthesis in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The exploitation of sexual signals by predators: a meta-analysis.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Pooled it
- Host Call Frequency Drives Attractiveness to an Eavesdropping Micropredator.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Elaboration of a Movement-Based Signal in the Presence of a Predator.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Choosing courtship over caution: male jumping spiders delay anti-predator responses.Frontiers in zoology · 2026Article
- Dialogues in colour and behaviour: integration of complex signalling traits and physiology.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Courtship and spawning behaviour of medaka in a semi-outdoor environment initiating at midnight.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Reliability of meta-analyses in ecology and evolution: (mostly) good news from a case study on sexual signals.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- The ontogeny of decision-making in an eavesdropping predator.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Sexual selection and predator response in a male-polymorphic livebearing fish.Ethology : formerly Zeitschrift fur Tierpsychologie · 2025Article
- Managing the tradeoff between reproduction and survival requires flexibility in behaviour and gene regulation in three-spined stickleback.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Starving infecund widow spiders maintain sexual attractiveness and trade off safety for enhanced prey capture.iScience · 2024Article
- Do risk-prone behaviours compromise reproduction and increase vulnerability of fish aggregations exposed to fishing?Biology letters · 2024Article
- Deceptive pollinator lures benefit from physical and perceptual proximity to flowers.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- The evolution of prey-attraction strategies in spiders: the interplay between foraging and predator avoidance.Oecologia · 2023Review
- Parasite effects on receivers in animal communication: Hidden impacts on behavior, ecology, and evolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- An Invited Reply to: A Comment on: The exploitation of sexual signals by predators: a meta-analysis (2022) WhiteProceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Assessing patterns of eavesdropper risk on sexual signals and the use of meta-analysis in behavioural ecology: a comment on: 'The exploitation of sexual signals by predators: a meta-analysis' WhiteProceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Sensory biases in response to novel complex acoustic signals in male and female grey treefrogs,Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Sexual signals are often central to reproduction, and their expression is thought to strike a balance between advertising to mates and avoiding detection by predatory eavesdroppers. Tests of the predicted predation costs have produced mixed results, however. Here we synthesized 187 effects from 78 experimental studies in a meta-analytic test of two questions; namely, whether predators, parasites and parasitoids express preferences for the sexual signals of prey, and whether sexual signals increase realized predation risk in the wild. We found that predators and parasitoids express strong and consistent preferences for signals in forced-choice contexts. We found a similarly strong overall increase in predation on sexual signallers in the wild, though here it was modality specific. Olfactory and acoustic signals increased the incidence of eavesdropping relative to visual signals, which experienced no greater risk than controls on average. Variation in outcome measures was universally high, suggesting that contexts in which sexual signalling may incur no cost, or even reduce the incidence of predation, are common. Our results reveal unexpected complexity in a central viability cost to sexual signalling, while also speaking to applied problems in invasion biology and pest management where signal exploitation holds promise for bio-inspired solutions.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.