TY - JOUR
T1 - Disruptive coloration and background pattern matching
AU - Cuthill, Innes C.
AU - Stevens, Martin
AU - Sheppard, Jenna
AU - Haddocks, Tracey
AU - Párraga, C. Atejandro
AU - Troscianko, Tom S.
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgements We thank J. Endler for suggestions. The research was supported by a BBSRC grant to I.C.C., T.S.T. and J. C. Partridge.
Funding Information:
Acknowledgements I thank E. DuVal, E. Lacey and especially W. Koenig and M. Hauber for comments on the manuscript; J. Dickinson, S. Beissinger, B. Jones, B. Slikas and N. Johnson for training and discussion; B. Davis, A. Hsieh, F. Aguillar, C. Miller, J. Leyhe, R. Orben, L. Robinson, M. Nguyen, B. Loui, M. Nasiri and C. Chu and others for field and laboratory assistance; and P. Kephart for research access to Rana Creek Ranch. My research was funded by an NSF graduate fellowship and dissertation improvement grant, as well as the Animal Behavior Society, American Ornithologists’ Union, Sigma Xi, and support from both Integrative Biology and the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley.
PY - 2005/3/3
Y1 - 2005/3/3
N2 - Effective camouflage renders a target indistinguishable from irrelevant background objects. Two interrelated but logically distinct mechanisms for this are background pattern matching (crypsis1,2) and disruptive coloration: in the former, the animal's colours are a random sample of the background; in the latter, bold contrasting colours on the animal's periphery break up its outline. The latter has long been proposed as an explanation for some apparently conspicuous coloration in animals, and is standard textbook material. Surprisingly, only one quantitative test of the theory exists, and one experimental test of its effectiveness against non-human predators. Here we test two key predictions: that patterns on the body's outline should be particularly effective in promoting concealment and that highly contrasting colours should enhance this disruptive effect Artificial moth-like targets were exposed to bird predation in the field, with the experimental colour patterns on the 'wings' and a dead mealworm as the edible 'body'. Survival analysis supported the predictions, indicating that disruptive coloration is an effective means of camouflage, above and beyond background pattern matching.
AB - Effective camouflage renders a target indistinguishable from irrelevant background objects. Two interrelated but logically distinct mechanisms for this are background pattern matching (crypsis1,2) and disruptive coloration: in the former, the animal's colours are a random sample of the background; in the latter, bold contrasting colours on the animal's periphery break up its outline. The latter has long been proposed as an explanation for some apparently conspicuous coloration in animals, and is standard textbook material. Surprisingly, only one quantitative test of the theory exists, and one experimental test of its effectiveness against non-human predators. Here we test two key predictions: that patterns on the body's outline should be particularly effective in promoting concealment and that highly contrasting colours should enhance this disruptive effect Artificial moth-like targets were exposed to bird predation in the field, with the experimental colour patterns on the 'wings' and a dead mealworm as the edible 'body'. Survival analysis supported the predictions, indicating that disruptive coloration is an effective means of camouflage, above and beyond background pattern matching.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=14544293973&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/nature03312
DO - 10.1038/nature03312
M3 - Article
C2 - 15744301
AN - SCOPUS:14544293973
SN - 0028-0836
VL - 434
SP - 72
EP - 74
JO - Nature
JF - Nature
ER -