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Humans perceive but animals don't: pitfalls in using plasticine models for assessing biotic interactions.

Xiao Huang^1,2, Si-Chong Chen^1,3

¹State Key Laboratory of Plant Diversity and Specialty Crops, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, People's Republic of China.

Proceedings. Biological Sciences

|October 21, 2025

Summary

Plasticine models are common in ecological studies, but this research shows animals don't distinguish between different models. This suggests potential biases in using these models to study animal interactions.

Keywords:

biotic interactions frugivory insectivory plasticine models predation

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Area of Science:

Ecology
Behavioral Ecology
Predator-Prey Dynamics

Background:

Observation methods are vital for understanding ecological processes.
Plasticine models mimicking prey are widely used to assess biotic interactions.
Concerns exist regarding the accuracy of plasticine models in capturing specific interaction intensity and types.

Purpose of the Study:

To synthesize previous studies using plasticine models for quantifying biotic interactions.
To experimentally assess the accuracy of plasticine models in representing distinct prey types.
To identify and minimize anthropocentric biases in ecological experimental designs.

Main Methods:

Synthesized data from previous studies on plasticine models.
Deployed 2430 plasticine models of varying sizes, shapes, and colors across two biomes and multiple seasons.
Analyzed attack rates on models, differentiating by animal guilds.

Main Results:

No significant differences in attack rates were found among plasticine models with varying characteristics.
Attack rates were influenced by overall animal richness and activity, not solely specific biotic interactions.
Animals did not consistently distinguish visually different plasticine models as distinct prey.

Conclusions:

The use of plasticine models may introduce anthropocentric biases in assessing biotic interactions.
Ecological experimental designs must incorporate animal habits and behaviors for accurate assessments.
Rethinking the application of plasticine models is crucial for reliable ecological data.