Generalist camouflage can be more successful than microhabitat specialisation in natural environments
dc.contributor.author | Briolat, ES | |
dc.contributor.author | Arenas, LM | |
dc.contributor.author | Hughes, AE | |
dc.contributor.author | Liggins, E | |
dc.contributor.author | Stevens, M | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2021-09-08T13:59:40Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2021-08-03 | |
dc.description.abstract | Background: Crypsis by background-matching is a critical form of anti-predator defence for animals exposed to visual predators, but achieving effective camouflage in patchy and variable natural environments is not straightforward. To cope with heterogeneous backgrounds, animals could either specialise on particular microhabitat patches, appearing cryptic in some areas but mismatching others, or adopt a compromise strategy, providing partial matching across different patch types. Existing studies have tested the effectiveness of compromise strategies in only a limited set of circumstances, primarily with small targets varying in pattern, and usually in screen-based tasks. Here, we measured the detection risk associated with different background-matching strategies for relatively large targets, with human observers searching for them in natural scenes, and focusing on colour. Model prey were designed to either ‘specialise’ on the colour of common microhabitat patches, or ‘generalise’ by matching the average colour of the whole visual scenes. Results: In both the field and an equivalent online computer-based search task, targets adopting the generalist strategy were more successful in evading detection than those matching microhabitat patches. This advantage occurred because, across all possible locations in these experiments, targets were typically viewed against a patchwork of different microhabitat areas; the putatively generalist targets were thus more similar on average to their various immediate surroundings than were the specialists. Conclusions: Demonstrating close agreement between the results of field and online search experiments provides useful validation of online citizen science methods commonly used to test principles of camouflage, at least for human observers. In finding a survival benefit to matching the average colour of the visual scenes in our chosen environment, our results highlight the importance of relative scales in determining optimal camouflage strategies, and suggest how compromise coloration can succeed in nature. | en_GB |
dc.description.sponsorship | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council | en_GB |
dc.description.sponsorship | QinetiQ | en_GB |
dc.identifier.citation | Vol. 21, article 151 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.1186/s12862-021-01883-w | |
dc.identifier.grantnumber | BB/P018319/1 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10871/127014 | |
dc.language.iso | en | en_GB |
dc.publisher | BMC | en_GB |
dc.rights | © The Author(s) 2021. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativeco mmons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data | en_GB |
dc.subject | Camouflage | en_GB |
dc.subject | Crypsis | en_GB |
dc.subject | Background matching | en_GB |
dc.subject | Anti-predator coloration | en_GB |
dc.subject | Detection risk | en_GB |
dc.subject | Citizen science | en_GB |
dc.title | Generalist camouflage can be more successful than microhabitat specialisation in natural environments | en_GB |
dc.type | Article | en_GB |
dc.date.available | 2021-09-08T13:59:40Z | |
dc.identifier.issn | 2730-7182 | |
dc.description | This is the final version. Available from BMC via the DOI in this record. | en_GB |
dc.description | The data and code supporting this publication are openly available on the Open Science Framework repository at: https://osf.io/6p2fw/ | en_GB |
dc.identifier.journal | BMC Ecology and Evolution | en_GB |
dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | en_GB |
dcterms.dateAccepted | 2021-07-25 | |
exeter.funder | ::Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Councils (BBSRC) | en_GB |
rioxxterms.version | VoR | en_GB |
rioxxterms.licenseref.startdate | 2021-08-03 | |
rioxxterms.type | Journal Article/Review | en_GB |
refterms.dateFCD | 2021-09-08T13:55:41Z | |
refterms.versionFCD | VoR | |
refterms.dateFOA | 2021-09-08T13:59:49Z | |
refterms.panel | A | en_GB |
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mmons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data