Animal Behaviour: Strategic Signalling by Cephalopods

SummaryCuttlefish are masters of disguise, rapidly changing colour to blend with their backgrounds. A new study shows that they break camouflage to direct warning messages at certain predators, but only those likely to be dissuaded by visual signals

The unsuitability of html-based colour charts for estimating animal colours - a comment on Berggren and Merilä (2004)

BACKGROUND: A variety of techniques are used to study the colours of animal signals, including the use of visual matching to colour charts. This paper aims to highlight why they are generally an unsatisfactory tool for the measurement and classification of animal colours and why colour codes based on HTML (really RGB) standards, as advocated in a recent paper, are particularly inappropriate. There are many theoretical arguments against the use of colour charts, not least that human colour vision differs markedly from that of most other animals. However, the focus of this paper is the concern that, even when applied to humans, there is no simple 1:1 mapping from an RGB colour space to the perceived colours in a chart (the results are both printer- and illumination-dependent). We support our criticisms with data from colour matching experiments with humans, involving self-made, printed colour charts. RESULTS: Colour matching experiments with printed charts involving 11 subjects showed that the choices made by individuals were significantly different between charts that had exactly the same RGB values, but were produced from different printers. Furthermore, individual matches tended to vary under different lighting conditions. Spectrophotometry of the colour charts showed that the reflectance spectra of the charts varied greatly between printers and that equal steps in RGB space were often far from equal in terms of reflectance on the printed charts. CONCLUSION: In addition to outlining theoretical criticisms of the use of colour charts, our empirical results show that: individuals vary in their perception of colours, that different printers produce strikingly different results when reproducing what should be the same chart, and that the characteristics of the light irradiating the surface do affect colour perception. Therefore, we urge great caution in the use of colour charts to study animal colour signals. They should be used only as a last resort and in full knowledge of their limitations, with specially produced charts made to high industry standards

Disruptive coloration and perceptual grouping.

Camouflage is the primary defence of many animals and includes multiple strategies that interfere with figure-ground segmentation and object recognition. While matching background colours and textures is widespread and conceptually straightforward, less well explored are the optical ‘tricks’, collectively called disruptive colouration, that exploit perceptual grouping mechanisms. Adjacent high contrast colours create false edges, but this is not sufficient for an object’s shape to be broken up; some colours must blend with the background. We test the novel hypothesis that this will be particularly effective when the colour patches on the animal appear to belong to, not merely different background colours, but different background objects. We used computer-based experiments where human participants had to find cryptic targets on artificial backgrounds. Creating what appeared to be bi-coloured foreground objects on bi-coloured backgrounds, we generated colour boundaries that had identical local contrast but either lay within or between (illusory) objects. As predicted, error rates for targets matching what appeared to be different background objects were higher than for targets which had otherwise identical local contrast to the background but appeared to belong to single background objects. This provides evidence for disruptive colouration interfering with higher-level feature integration in addition to previously demonstrated low-level effects involving contour detection. In addition, detection was impeded in treatments where targets were on or in close proximity to multiple background colour or tone boundaries. This is consistent with other studies which show a deleterious influence of visual ‘clutter’ or background complexity on search

Seasonal variation in the selection and use of habitats by large herbivores at Mole National Park, Ghana

There is scanty information on herbivore habitat ecology at Mole National Park (MNP) despite the fact that understanding habitat interactions, such as habitat selection and use, by large herbivores is fundamental for its management. Our aim was to determine the effects of seasonal variation on habitat selection and use by large herbivores at MNP, Ghana. Eight large herbivores were counted within transects, located in six habitat types, over one year and Jacobs’ selectivity index was used to calculate their selectivity of the habitat types. Six of the eight herbivores maintained their preferred habitats throughout all seasons or showed unpredictable seasonal pattern of habitat selectivity, but a seasonal change was clear for elephant (Loxodonta africana) and buffalo (Syncerus caffer). Elephant shifted from riverine forest to swamp habitats in the dry season but preferred both riverine and swamp in other seasons. Buffalo selected and used Anogeissus in all seasons but used swamp in the rainy season and riverine forest in the fire season. Kob (Kobus kob), warthog (Phacochoerus africanus) and bushbuck (Tragelaphus scriptus) appeared to minimise predation risk by avoiding the open savanna, waterbuck (Kobus defassa) preferred swamp in all seasons, whereas roan antelope (Hippotragus equinus) and hartebeest (Alcelaphus bucelaphus) avoided swamp. All eight herbivores were less selective in the rainy season and more selective in the fire season. Shrinkage of habitat resources by fire increased selectivity, while post-fire regrowth in the rainy season increased forage resources and reduced selectivity. Of the factors that influenced the seasonal patterns of herbivore selectivity, only fire can be addressed by National Park management policies, particularly to determine which habitat types should be the focus of fire control operations

Orientation to the sun by animals and its interaction with crypsis

1. Orientation with respect to the sun has been observed in a wide range of species and hasgenerally been interpreted in terms of thermoregulation and/or ultraviolet (UV) protection. For countershaded animals, orientation with respect to the sun may also result from the pres-sure to exploit the gradient of coloration optimally to enhance crypsis.2. Here, we use computational modelling to predict the optimal countershading pattern for anoriented body. We assess how camouflage performance declines as orientation varies using acomputational model that incorporates realistic lighting environments.3. Once an optimal countershading pattern for crypsis has been chosen, we determineseparately how UV protection/irradiation and solar thermal inflow fluctuate with orientation.4. We show that body orientations that could optimally use countershading to enhance crypsisare very similar to those that allow optimal solar heat inflow and UV protection.5. Our findings suggest that crypsis has been overlooked as a selective pressure on orientationand that new experiments should be designed to tease apart the respective roles of these different selective pressures. We propose potential experiments that could achieve this

Explaining individual variation in patterns of mass loss in breeding birds.

RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are.BACKGROUND: Studies of birds have a disproportionate representation in the literature on life-history evolution, because of the (apparent) ease with which the costs and benefits can be quantified and manipulated. During reproduction, birds frequently show a highly conserved pattern of mass change and changes in mass loss during breeding have been widely considered to be a valid short-term measure of the costs of reproduction. Experimental manipulations of the breeding attempts of birds usually argue that the presence of a response shows that a cost of reproduction exists, but there is little consensus as to how the size of these costs can be measured. RESULTS: We model this mass loss by considering how a parent can maximise its lifetime reproductive success, using a theoretical framework that is particularly suited to modelling parental care in altricial birds. If lifetime reproductive success is taken to be the sum of a parent's current and future reproductive success, we show that the exact forms of these components will influence the optimal amount of mass a parent should lose. In particular, we demonstrate that the shape of the relationship between parental investment and chick survival will lead to differing degrees of investment between parents of different initial qualities: parents with initially high levels of energy reserves could conceivably invested a lesser, similar or greater amount of resources than parents with initially low reserves, and these initially 'heavy' parents could potentially end up being lighter than the initially 'lighter' individuals. CONCLUSION: We argue that it is difficult to make predictions about the dependence of a parent's final mass on its initial mass, and therefore mass loss should only be used as a short-term measure of the costs of reproduction with caution. The model demonstrates that we require a better understanding of the relationship between mass loss and both current and future reproductive success of the parent, before predictions about mass loss can be made and tested. We discuss steps that could be taken to increase the accuracy of our predictions

Dazzle camouflage, target tracking, and the confusion effect

The influence of coloration on the ecology and evolution of moving animals in groups is poorly understood. Animals in groups benefit from the “confusion effect,” where predator attack success is reduced with increasing group size or density. This is thought to be due to a sensory bottleneck: an increase in the difficulty of tracking one object among many. Motion dazzle camouflage has been hypothesized to disrupt accurate perception of the trajectory or speed of an object or animal. The current study investigates the suggestion that dazzle camouflage may enhance the confusion effect. Utilizing a computer game style experiment with human predators, we found that when moving in groups, targets with stripes parallel to the targets’ direction of motion interact with the confusion effect to a greater degree, and are harder to track, than those with more conventional background matching patterns. The findings represent empirical evidence that some high-contrast patterns may benefit animals in groups. The results also highlight the possibility that orientation and turning may be more relevant in the mechanisms of dazzle camouflage than previously recognized

Contrast, contours and the confusion effect in dazzle camouflage

‘Motion dazzle camouflage’ is the name for the putative effects of highly conspicuous, often repetitive or complex, patterns on parameters important in prey capture, such as the perception of speed, direction and identity. Research into motion dazzle camouflage is increasing our understanding of the interactions between visual tracking, the confusion effect and defensive coloration. However, there is a paucity of research into the effects of contrast on motion dazzle camouflage: is maximal contrast a prerequisite for effectiveness? If not, this has important implications for our recognition of the phenotype and understanding of the function and mechanisms of potential motion dazzle camouflage patterns. Here we tested human participants' ability to track one moving target among many identical distractors with surface patterns designed to test the influence of these factors. In line with previous evidence, we found that targets with stripes parallel to the object direction of motion were hardest to track. However, reduction in contrast did not significantly influence this result. This finding may bring into question the utility of current definitions of motion dazzle camouflage, and means that some animal patterns, such as aposematic or mimetic stripes, may have previously unrecognized multiple functions