The Defensive Repertoire of New World Coral Snakes: Evolution and Natural History

  1. Felipe Paiva
  2. Leandro Silva
  3. Fabricius Domingos
  4. Fabio Muniz
  5. Ricardo Kawashita-Ribeiro

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Abstract

The defensive repertoire of New World coral snakes is diverse, but its evolutionary history remains poorly understood. We compiled 280 records of 11 defensive behaviors across 85 species of Micrurus and one species of Micruroides from the literature and contributions by researchers, naturalists, and wildlife photographers. Fifty-seven records represented behaviors not previously documented for the respective species. Using mitochondrial ND4 sequences, we inferred a Bayesian phylogeny, reconstructed ancestral states, and evaluated phylogenetic signal of the defensive behaviors. Tail-raising and coiling, dorsoventral body flattening, erratic movements, and head-hiding were reconstructed in the common ancestor of Micruroides and Micrurus, indicating a broadly conserved ancestral defensive repertoire. Erratic movements and head-hiding showed significant individual phylogenetic signal, and the combined profile of the four widespread behaviors was also phylogenetically structured. Hemipenis eversion was reconstructed as a synapomorphy of the sampled Micrurus frontalis-M. spixii clade, with an independent origin in M. boicora. Ventral exposure, cloacal popping sounds, and other less frequent behaviors also showed independent origins. These findings reveal a defensive repertoire combining deep evolutionary conservation with repeated origins of more restricted behaviors, while highlighting major gaps in behavioral sampling.

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  1. PREreview

    This Zenodo record is a permanently preserved version of a PREreview. You can view the complete PREreview at https://prereview.org/reviews/22666147.

    Overall Assessment

    This study presents a valuable comparative analysis of defensive behaviors, integrating phylogenetic comparative methods with ancestral-state reconstructions. The work addresses important questions regarding the evolution of antipredator strategies and provides a comprehensive dataset that will be of interest to researchers in behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology. We view this as a timely contribution that advances our understanding of the evolutionary dynamics of defensive traits. Our comments are intended to strengthen the manuscript and improve the transparency of particular analytical decisions and presentations.

    Comments and Recommendations

    1. Since the study includes ancestral-state reconstructions, we recommend explicitly incorporating this analysis into the objectives presented at the end of the Introduction. The objective could be presented alongside the assessment of phylogenetic signal, thereby ensuring that the stated aims accurately reflect the main comparative analyses conducted in the study.

    2. We suggest specifying, in the Materials and Methods section, the period during which the literature review was conducted and researchers, naturalists, and wildlife photographers were contacted for additional behavioral records. Providing this information would improve the transparency and reproducibility of the data-collection process.

    3. Figure 2 does not represent a heatmap in the conventional sense, as it primarily displays the presence or absence of defensive behaviors across taxa. We therefore recommend replacing the term "heatmap" with a more precise description, such as "presence–absence matrix of defensive behaviors."

    4. We recommend including, in the Supplementary Material, the calculated frequencies of each defensive behavior that were used to define the priors for the ancestral-state reconstruction analyses. Providing these values would improve methodological transparency and allow readers to more readily evaluate and reproduce the analyses.

    5. We suggest removing the red "X" symbols from Figure 4, as they may distract from the illustrations. Instead, the meaning of the "X" symbol could be explained directly in the legends of the ancestral-state reconstruction figures (Figs. 5 and 6), indicating that behaviors marked with an "X" are absent.

    6. To facilitate interpretation of Table 1, we recommend highlighting in bold the defensive behaviors for which statistically significant phylogenetic signal was detected. This would allow readers to identify the main results of the phylogenetic-signal analyses more readily.

    7. When discussing the contrasting results obtained from phylogenetic-signal analyses of discrete traits, we recommend citing Uyeda et al. (2018), "Rethinking phylogenetic comparative methods." This study provides relevant conceptual support for the limitations and interpretative challenges associated with phylogenetic comparative analyses and would strengthen the discussion of the patterns observed in the present study.

    This review was developed collaboratively by members of the DEVL (Diversity and Evolution Laboratory) PREREVIEW Club during a group peer-review exercise intended to train graduate research students. Reviewers: Amanda Varago, Bruno Torquato, Fernanda Caron, and Matheus Salles.

    Conflitos de interesse

    We declare that all reviewers of this manuscript are members of the same research laboratory as the manuscript authors (DEvL - Zoological Diversity and Evolution Laboratory). This review was developed as part of a group peer-review training exercise conducted jointly by laboratory members. Although we share the same academic environment and institutional affiliation as the authors, our evaluations were conducted independently and critically, with the aim of providing constructive contributions to improve the manuscript.

    Uso de Inteligência Artificial (IA)

    The authors declare that they did not use generative AI to come up with new ideas for their review.

  2. Version published to 10.32942/x2hd59