School of Biological Sciences, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley 6009, Perth, Australia.
UWA Oceans Institute, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley 6009, Perth, Australia.
Biol Lett. 2023 Aug;19(8):20220596. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2022.0596. Epub 2023 Aug 2.
Disruptive markings are common in animal patterns and can provide camouflage benefits by concealing the body's true edges and/or by breaking the surface of the body into multiple depth planes. Disruptive patterns that are accentuated by high contrast borders are most likely to provide false depth cues to enhance camouflage, but studies to date have used visual detection models or humans as predators. We presented three-dimensional-printed moth-like targets to wild bird predators to determine whether: (1) three-dimensional prey with disrupted body surfaces have higher survival than three-dimensional prey with continuous surfaces, (2) two-dimensional prey with disruptive patterns or enhanced edge markings have higher survival than non-patterned two-dimensional prey. We found a survival benefit for three-dimensional prey with disrupted surfaces, and a significant effect of mean wing luminance. There was no evidence that false depth cues provided the same protective benefits as physical surface disruption in three-dimensional prey, perhaps because our treatments did not mimic the complexity of patterns found in natural animal markings. Our findings indicate that disruption of surface continuity is an important strategy for concealing a three-dimensional body shape.
扰乱标记在动物图案中很常见，通过隐藏身体的真实边缘和/或将身体表面分成多个深度平面，它们可以提供伪装优势。具有高对比度边界强调的扰乱图案最有可能提供错误的深度线索来增强伪装，但迄今为止的研究使用了视觉检测模型或人类作为捕食者。我们向野生鸟类捕食者展示了三维打印的蛾状目标，以确定以下两点：（1）具有扰乱表面的三维猎物比具有连续表面的三维猎物有更高的存活率；（2）具有扰乱图案或增强边缘标记的二维猎物比无图案的二维猎物有更高的存活率。我们发现，具有扰乱表面的三维猎物具有生存优势，并且平均翅膀亮度有显著影响。没有证据表明，三维猎物中的虚假深度线索提供了与物理表面扰乱相同的保护优势，这可能是因为我们的处理方式没有模拟自然动物标记中发现的图案的复杂性。我们的研究结果表明，表面连续性的扰乱是隐藏三维身体形状的重要策略。
