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Camouflaging moving objects: crypsis and masquerade

Motion is generally assumed to “break” camouflage. However, although camouflage cannot conceal a group of moving animals, it may impair a predator’s ability to single one out for attack, even if that discrimination is not based on a color difference. Here, we use a computer-based task in which human...

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Autores principales: Hall, Joanna R, Baddeley, Roland, Scott-Samuel, Nicholas E, Shohet, Adam J, Cuthill, Innes C
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5873248/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29622927
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arx085
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author Hall, Joanna R
Baddeley, Roland
Scott-Samuel, Nicholas E
Shohet, Adam J
Cuthill, Innes C
author_facet Hall, Joanna R
Baddeley, Roland
Scott-Samuel, Nicholas E
Shohet, Adam J
Cuthill, Innes C
author_sort Hall, Joanna R
collection PubMed
description Motion is generally assumed to “break” camouflage. However, although camouflage cannot conceal a group of moving animals, it may impair a predator’s ability to single one out for attack, even if that discrimination is not based on a color difference. Here, we use a computer-based task in which humans had to detect the odd one out among moving objects, with “oddity” based on shape. All objects were either patterned or plain, and either matched the background or not. We show that there are advantages of matching both group-mates and the background. However, when patterned objects are on a plain background (i.e., no background matching), the advantage of being among similarly patterned distractors is only realized when the group size is larger (10 compared to 5). In a second experiment, we present a paradigm for testing how coloration interferes with target-distractor discrimination, based on an adaptive staircase procedure for establishing the threshold. We show that when the predator only has a short time for decision-making, displaying a similar pattern to the distractors and the background affords protection even when the difference in shape between target and distractors is large. We conclude that, even though motion breaks camouflage, being camouflaged could help group-living animals reduce the risk of being singled out for attack by predators.
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spelling pubmed-58732482018-04-05 Camouflaging moving objects: crypsis and masquerade Hall, Joanna R Baddeley, Roland Scott-Samuel, Nicholas E Shohet, Adam J Cuthill, Innes C Behav Ecol Original Articles Motion is generally assumed to “break” camouflage. However, although camouflage cannot conceal a group of moving animals, it may impair a predator’s ability to single one out for attack, even if that discrimination is not based on a color difference. Here, we use a computer-based task in which humans had to detect the odd one out among moving objects, with “oddity” based on shape. All objects were either patterned or plain, and either matched the background or not. We show that there are advantages of matching both group-mates and the background. However, when patterned objects are on a plain background (i.e., no background matching), the advantage of being among similarly patterned distractors is only realized when the group size is larger (10 compared to 5). In a second experiment, we present a paradigm for testing how coloration interferes with target-distractor discrimination, based on an adaptive staircase procedure for establishing the threshold. We show that when the predator only has a short time for decision-making, displaying a similar pattern to the distractors and the background affords protection even when the difference in shape between target and distractors is large. We conclude that, even though motion breaks camouflage, being camouflaged could help group-living animals reduce the risk of being singled out for attack by predators. Oxford University Press 2017 2017-06-17 /pmc/articles/PMC5873248/ /pubmed/29622927 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arx085 Text en © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Articles
Hall, Joanna R
Baddeley, Roland
Scott-Samuel, Nicholas E
Shohet, Adam J
Cuthill, Innes C
Camouflaging moving objects: crypsis and masquerade
title Camouflaging moving objects: crypsis and masquerade
title_full Camouflaging moving objects: crypsis and masquerade
title_fullStr Camouflaging moving objects: crypsis and masquerade
title_full_unstemmed Camouflaging moving objects: crypsis and masquerade
title_short Camouflaging moving objects: crypsis and masquerade
title_sort camouflaging moving objects: crypsis and masquerade
topic Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5873248/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29622927
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arx085
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