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Masquerade: Camouflage Without Crypsis

2009; American Association for the Advancement of Science; Volume: 327; Issue: 5961 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1126/science.1181931

1095-9203

John Skelhorn, Hannah M. Rowland, Michael P. Speed, Graeme D. Ruxton,

Insect and Arachnid Ecology and Behavior

Masquerade describes the resemblance of an organism to an inedible object and is hypothesized to facilitate misidentification of that organism by its predators or its prey. To date, there has been no empirical demonstration of the benefits of masquerade. Here, we show that two species of caterpillar obtain protection from an avian predator by being misidentified as twigs. By manipulating predators' previous experience of the putative model but keeping their exposure to the masquerader the same, we determined that predators misidentify masquerading prey as their models, rather than simply failing to detect them.