The evolution and ecology of masquerade

Abstract

Many organisms appear to mimic inanimate objects such as twigs, leaves, stones, and bird droppings. Such adaptations are considered to have evolved because their bearers are misidentified as either inedible objects by their predators, or as innocuous objects by their prey. In the past, this phenomenon has been classified by some as Batesian mimicry and by others as crypsis, but now is considered to be conceptually different from both, and has been termed 'masquerade'. Despite the debate over how to classify masquerade, this phenomenon has received little attention from evolutionary biologists. Here, we discuss the limited empirical evidence supporting the idea that masquerade functions to cause misidentification of organisms, provide a testable definition of masquerade, and suggest how masquerade evolved and under what ecological conditions. (C) 2010 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2010, 99, 1-8

Camouflage and Perceptual Organization in the Animal Kingdom

“…Masquerading as a stick can be successful even when completely visible, whereas matching a sample of the background texture ceases to be an effective defence when the animal is readily segmented from the background. Masquerade depends on the mechanisms of object recognition and relative abundance of model and mimic (frequency dependent selection), rather than perceptual organization so we say no more about it here, but refer the reader to a recent review (Skelhorn et al 2010a).…”

Cognition and the evolution of camouflage

“…twigs and leaves) that they resemble post-detection [2]. This implicitly assumes that the cognitive processes of predators drive the evolution of masquerade: predators learn that models are inedible and generalize their learned avoidance of models to masquerading prey [2,3].…”

“…twigs and leaves) that they resemble post-detection [2]. This implicitly assumes that the cognitive processes of predators drive the evolution of masquerade: predators learn that models are inedible and generalize their learned avoidance of models to masquerading prey [2,3]. This has recently been confirmed empirically in a series of experiments in which naive domestic chicks acted as predators of caterpillars (early thorn moth, Selenia dentaria, and brimstone moth, Opisthograptis luteolata) that resemble the twigs of their host plants (hawthorn, Crataegus spp.).…”

“…Many species of masqueraders are polymorphic or polyphenetic, or show high levels of intraspecific variation in their appearance [2,3]. For example, Box 1.…”

“…These definitions are intended to give a brief overview of different forms of camouflage. More detailed definitions can be found in the following papers: [1][2][3][4][5][6]. )…”