Evolutionary Camouflage

In the last nine weeks I have discussed some amazing camouflage and mimicry techniques and mechanisms that animals use to hide from predators and gain access to prey. You might be questioning if the only organisms in the natural world that use these techniques are animals. The answer is no, not by a long shot. Plants use both camouflage and mimicry to conceal themselves from herbivores looking for their next meal. Wallace (1877) presumed that plants rarely had the need to conceal themselves, due to their protection methods of spines, toxicity, hardness or hairy coverings. This is believed to have led to less research into the field (Niu et al., 2018). However, there is a push to acknowledge the numerous ways that camouflage and mimicry is used in the plant world ( Niu et al., 2018). These methods have been aligned to animal camouflage such as, blending with their background, colour disruption, masquerading and chemical (Niu et al., 2018). Again, like animals, the better the camo...

A study published by Whitehead et al. (2014) discusses the ant-plant mutualism that occurs within some ecosystems. The plant provides ants with shelter and/or food, while the ants offer protection to the plant from other herbivores. Ants are extremely good at defensive mechanisms, protecting the plant against most herbivore attacks (Whitehead et al., 2014). Yet sometimes there are animals that can sneak past the ant defence system without the colony knowing. These organisms benefit greatly from flying under the radar as they have access to competition free food that is usually readily available for the ants (Whitehead et al., 2014). So how do they go undetected while essentially eating dinner at the same “restaurant”?   Some examples of these defences are having a toughened exocuticle, shelter-building behaviours and behavioural avoidance maneuvres (Whitehead et al., 2014).   Yet the defence mechanism we are talking about today is chemical camouflage. Ant societies are k...

As discussed last week, mimicry is a form of copy-catting that can benefit prey and predator (Ruxton et al., 2004). I also mentioned last week that there are several forms of mimicry, one being Batesian mimicry, where the prey mimics a dangerous organism (Skelhorn & Rowe. 2016). An example of Batesian mimicry, protective or defensive mimicry as it is sometimes known, is the harmless viperine snake ( Natrix maura; Santos et al., 2017). This snake has evolved to copy the morphological and behavioural traits of the asp viper ( Vipera aspis;  Santos et al., 2017). The asp viper is a highly venomous snake found in Southwest Europe, with a dark zigzagging dorsal pattern on a lighter body background (Santos et al., 2017). It also displays head triangulation, coiling body and striking behaviour, all which is copied by the viperine snake. Using mimicry, viperine snakes benefit from the asp viper’s toxicity. Animals will actively avoid both snakes as they cannot usually tell them ...

In my first post I discussed what camouflage is, but I made a mistake in saying that camouflage and mimicry are the same thing. I am dedicating this post to correcting my error and talking about the organisms that use mimicry, rather than camouflage to survive. Camouflage is when an organism blends in with its background, essentially hiding its whereabouts (Skelhorn & Rowe 2016). Whereas, mimicry is when an organism copies another organism’s characteristics. Often the organism that is being replicated has some sort of toxin or is unpalatable to predators (Ruxton et al., 2004). Like camouflage, mimicry evolved from the need for protection from predators or increased access to prey (Outomuro et al., 2016). Mimicry was first described by Bates in 1862 when he realised Amazonian butterflies had been incorrectly defined (Bates, 1862). He was amazed to find that one species mimicked the colours and features of the more toxic butterfly. This allowed the non-toxic butterfly to ga...