Disruptive patterning is a potentially universal camouflage technique that is thought to enhance concealment by rendering the detection of body shapes more difficult. In a recent series of field experiments, artificial moths with markings that extended to the edges of their 'wings' survived at higher rates than moths with the same edge patterns inwardly displaced. While this result seemingly indicates a benefit to obscuring edges, it is possible that the higher density markings of the inwardly displaced patterns concomitantly reduced their extent of background matching. Likewise, it has been suggested that the mealworm baits placed on the artificial moths could have created differential contrasts with different moth patterns. To address these concerns, we conducted controlled trials in which human subjects searched for computer-generated moth images presented against images of oak trees. Moths with edge-extended disruptive markings survived at higher rates, and took longer to find, than all other moth types, whether presented sequentially or simultaneously. However, moths with no edge markings and reduced interior pattern density survived better than their high-density counterparts, indicating that background matching may have played a so-far unrecognized role in the earlier experiments. Our disruptively patterned nonbackground-matching moths also had the lowest overall survivorship, indicating that disruptive coloration alone may not provide significant protection from predators. Collectively, our results provide independent support for the survival value of disruptive markings and demonstrate that there are common features in human and avian perception of camouflage.

The Semanticscience Integrated Ontology (SIO) is an ontology to facilitate biomedical knowledge discovery. SIO features a simple upper level comprised of essential types and relations for the rich description of arbitrary (real, hypothesized, virtual, fictional) objects, processes and their attributes. SIO specifies simple design patterns to describe and associate qualities, capabilities, functions, quantities, and informational entities including textual, geometrical, and mathematical entities, and provides specific extensions in the domains of chemistry, biology, biochemistry, and bioinformatics. SIO provides an ontological foundation for the Bio2RDF linked data for the life sciences project and is used for semantic integration and discovery for SADI-based semantic web services. SIO is freely available to all users under a creative commons by attribution license. See website for further information: http://sio.semanticscience.org.

Genetic and phenotypic correlations were estimated between 6 lifetime production and 28 linearized type traits using REML. The data set contained 34,322 cows, each with a record for all 34 traits. The analyses accounted for the fixed effects of herd, year-month, classifier, age at first calving, and stage of lactation. Heritabilities were low for lifetime traits and moderate for most type traits except stature, size, capacity, thurl width, and pin setting, which had high heritabilities. Most phenotypic correlations between lifetime production and type were in the range of .15 to .20 except for capacity, rump, and feet and legs, which were around .07. Genetic correlations were strong between lifetime production and angularity (.44 to .55) and dairy character (.53 to .56). Genetic correlations were low to moderate between life-time production and stature (.14 to .25), size (.07 to .18), texture (.19 to .26), style (.11 to .27), head (.15 to .23), pin setting (.10 to .16), rear udder (.19 to .25), and rear attachment (.10 to .22). The only notable negative genetic correlations were lifetime production with rear heel (-.16 to -.27), thurl width (-.18 to -.24), and fore udder (-.05 to -.11).

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