Search results for "warning colouration"

Multimodal Aposematic Signals and Their Emerging Role in Mate Attraction

2018

Experimental evidence suggests that specular reflectance and glossy appearance help amplify warning signals

2017

AbstractSpecular reflection appears as a bright spot or highlight on any smooth glossy convex surface and is caused by a near mirror-like reflectance off the surface. Convex shapes always provide the ideal geometry for highlights, areas of very strong reflectance, regardless of the orientation of the surface or position of the receiver. Despite highlights and glossy appearance being common in chemically defended insects, their potential signalling function is unknown. We tested the role of highlights in warning colouration of a chemically defended, alpine leaf beetle, Oreina cacaliae. We reduced the beetles’ glossiness, hence their highlights, by applying a clear matt finish varnish on thei…

Seeing red? Colour biases of foraging birds are context dependent.

2020

Funder: Suomen Kulttuurirahasto; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100003125

Multimodal Aposematic Signals and Their Emerging Role in Mate Attraction

2018

Chemically defended animals often display conspicuous color patterns that predators learn to associate with their unprofitability and subsequently avoid. Such animals (i.e., aposematic), deter predators by stimulating their visual and chemical sensory channels. Hence, aposematism is considered to be “multimodal.” The evolution of warning signals (and to a lesser degree their accompanying chemical defenses) is fundamentally linked to natural selection by predators. Lately, however, increasing evidence also points to a role of sexual selection shaping warning signal evolution. One of the species in which this has been shown is the wood tiger moth, Arctia plantaginis, which we here put forward…