Camouflage is an important anti-predator strategy for many animals and
is traditionally thought of as being tightly linked to a specific visual
background. While much work focuses on optimizing camouflage against
one background, this may not be relevant for many species and contexts,
as animals may encounter many different habitats ...
Camouflage is an important anti-predator strategy for many animals and
is traditionally thought of as being tightly linked to a specific visual
background. While much work focuses on optimizing camouflage against
one background, this may not be relevant for many species and contexts,
as animals may encounter many different habitats throughout their lives
due to temporal and spatial variation in their environment. How should
camouflage be optimized when an animal or object is seen against
multiple visual backgrounds? Various solutions may exist, including
colour change to match new environments or use of behaviour to maintain
crypsis by choosing appropriate substrates. Here, we focus on a selection
of approaches under a third alternative strategy: animals may adopt (over
evolution) camouflage appearances that represent an optimal solution
against multiple visual scenes. One approach may include a generalist
or compromise strategy, where coloration matches several backgrounds
to some extent, but none closely. A range of other camouflage types,
including disruptive camouflage, may also provide protection in
multiple environments. Despite detailed theoretical work determining
the plausibility of compromise camouflage and elucidating the conditions
under which it might evolve, there is currently mixed experimental
evidence supporting its value and little evidence of it in natural systems.
In addition, there remain many questions including how camouflage
strategies should be defined and optimized, and how they might interact
with other types of crypsis and defensive markings. Overall, we provide a
critical overview of our current knowledge about how camouflage can
enable matching to multiple backgrounds, discuss important challenges
of working on this question and make recommendations for future
research.
