Filipe C Serrano , Juan Diaz-Ricaurte, Cristopher Antúnez-Fonseca, Yulfreiler Garavito-David, Aida Garcia, Rolland Díaz-Morales, Silvia Travaglia-Cardoso

Predation is a strong driver of prey behavior and sympatric species are exposed to similar selective predatory pressures.We test the hypothesis that this leads to similar anti-predator behaviors using the widespread Neotropical snake tribe Pseudoboini. We reviewed and compiled documented defensive behaviors for all species, adding new unreported behaviors for three species. We used a cluster analysis to generate a matrix of defensive behavior dissimilarity between species. We then used a PGLMM to test how behavior dissimilarity changed with range overlap, similarity in ecological traits and phylogenetic relatedness. Only 41 species had available data on defensive behavior, with only 22 of those represented in the phylogeny. We found that similarity in defensive behavior is significantly (albeit not strongly) correlated with range overlap, but only for species with similar body sizes. Phylogenetic relatedness by itself was a poor predictor of behavior dissimilarity. This corroborates our hypothesis that defensive behaviors are spatially structured at larger scales but that it can be modulated by morphological differences.. Our study tests inter-species ecogeographical differences of defensive behavior, and its implications can be broadly applied to other taxa.