Ruxton Graeme D
Division of Environmental and Evolutionary Biology, Faculty of Biomedical and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2009 Feb 27;364(1516):549-57. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2008.0228.
I review the evidence that organisms have adaptations that confer difficulty of detection by predators and parasites that seek their targets primarily using sensory systems other than vision. In other words, I will answer the question of whether crypsis is a concept that can usefully be applied to non-visual sensory perception. Probably because vision is such an important sensory system in humans, research in this field is sparse. Thus, at present we have very few examples of chemical camouflage, and even these contain some ambiguity in deciding whether they are best seen as examples of background matching or mimicry. There are many examples of organisms that are adaptively silent at times or in locations when or where predation risk is higher or in response to detection of a predator. By contrast, evidence that the form (rather than use) of vocalizations and other sound-based signals has been influenced by issues of reducing detectability to unintended receivers is suggestive rather than conclusive. There is again suggestive but not completely conclusive evidence for crypsis against electro-sensing predators. Lastly, mechanoreception is highly understudied in this regard, but there are scattered reports that strongly suggest that some species can be thought of as being adapted to be cryptic in this modality. Hence, I conclude that crypsis is a concept that can usefully be applied to senses other than vision, and that this is a field very much worthy of more investigation.
我回顾了相关证据，即生物具有一些适应性特征，这些特征使得主要利用视觉以外的感官系统来寻找目标的捕食者和寄生虫难以对其进行探测。换句话说，我将回答这样一个问题：隐匿是否是一个可以有效地应用于非视觉感官感知的概念。可能是因为视觉在人类中是如此重要的感官系统，所以该领域的研究较为稀少。因此，目前我们几乎没有化学伪装的例子，即便有，在判断它们是否最适合被视为背景匹配或拟态的例子时也存在一些模糊性。有许多生物的例子，它们在捕食风险较高的时间或地点，或者在察觉到捕食者时，会适应性地保持安静。相比之下，关于发声及其他基于声音的信号的形式（而非用途）受到降低被非目标接收者探测到的可能性这一因素影响的证据，只是具有启发性而非结论性的。对于针对电感应捕食者的隐匿，同样有具有启发性但并非完全结论性的证据。最后，在这方面对机械感受的研究非常不足，但有一些零散的报告强烈表明，某些物种可以被认为在这种感知方式上具有隐匿适应性。因此，我得出结论，隐匿是一个可以有效地应用于视觉以外的其他感官的概念，并且这是一个非常值得进一步研究的领域。
