Disruptive coloration and background pattern matching

Effective camouflage renders a target indistinguishable from irrelevant background objects. Two interrelated but logically distinct mechanisms for this are background pattern matching (crypsis 1 , 2 ) and disruptive coloration: in the former, the animal's colours are a random sample of the back...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature (London) 2005-03, Vol.434 (7029), p.72-74
Main Authors: Cuthill, Innes C., Stevens, Martin, Sheppard, Jenna, Maddocks, Tracey, Párraga, C. Alejandro, Troscianko, Tom S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation, Biological - physiology
Animal behavior
Animals
Aves
Biological Evolution
Birds
Birds - physiology
Color
Evolution
Humanities and Social Sciences
Insecta
Insects
letter
Models, Biological
Moths - anatomy & histology
Moths - physiology
multidisciplinary
Pattern Recognition, Visual
Pigmentation - physiology
Predation
Predators
Predatory Behavior - physiology
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Spiders
Survival Rate
Tenebrio
Wings, Animal - anatomy & histology
Wings, Animal - physiology
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Summary:Effective camouflage renders a target indistinguishable from irrelevant background objects. Two interrelated but logically distinct mechanisms for this are background pattern matching (crypsis 1 , 2 ) and disruptive coloration: in the former, the animal's colours are a random sample of the background 1 , 2 ; 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 3 , 4 , and is standard textbook material. Surprisingly, only one quantitative test 5 of the theory exists, and one experimental test of its effectiveness against non-human predators 6 . 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.
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/nature03312