Masquerade: camouflage without crypsis.
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.
Skelhorn
John
J
Division of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Faculty of Biomedical and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK.
Rowland
Hannah M
HM
Speed
Michael P
MP
Ruxton
Graeme D
GD
D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D002645:Chickens / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D009036:Moths / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D011235:Predatory Behavior; D021641:Recognition, Psychology