Question

i need help to understand those two question from discussion in this artical please.

3. Take a few minutes to re-read the first four paragraphs of the Discussion section. Explain in your own words the "metabolic suppression hypothesis" proposed by the researchers: what is the hypothesis, and why might it be plausible? WRITE YOUR RESPONSE HERE PLEASE (don't forget the in-text citation, as well as quotation marks and a page number if you are quoting in your answer) This study investigated the possibility that ambush-foraging snakes like the puffadder might be capable of chemical crypsis, allowing them to evade detection by predators. But puff adders are predators as well as prey. How could this study be adapted to investigate whether puff adders use chemical crypsis to evade detection by prey species as well? WRITE YOUR RESPONSE HERE PLEASE (don't forget the in-text citation, as well as quotation marks and a page number if you are quoting in your answer) Citation of source for Journal Club: FULL CITATION HERE PLEASE

Answer 1

Answer 3: The author in the manuscript is speculating that puff adders have lower metabolic rates compared to the other snake species detected by the predators. Reduced metabolic rate will decrease the production of volatile odorant that can be detected by the predators. This is called as chemical crypsis. Metabolic suppression hypothesis states that an organism many a times supresses its metabolism to have overall reproductive success in an environment. This is one type of adaptation to the hostile environment. That mean fitness is achieved by an organism at the cost of suppressed body metabolism.

Answer 4: An investigation has been made in the study to understand the possibility that ambush-foraging snakes like the puff adder might be capable of chemical crypsis, allowing then to evade detection by predators. Puff adders are predators as well as prey. This study could be adapted to investigate whether puff adders use chemical crypsis to evade detection by prey species as well by doing a comparative analytical experiment. Another ambush-foraging snake having behaviour similar to that of puff adder can be investigated parallelly with the puff adder’s prey catch. The other ambush-foraging snake should no have chemical crypsis which should be first confirmed with experiments as was done for the puff adder. The comparative prey response and its behaviour against the snake have chemical crypsis and the snake not having the chemical crypsis mechanism will be the approach. This would provide inferences on whether chemical crypsis evades detection by prey species from predators.