Tuesday, February 2, 2010

New Animal Camouflage Research

A recent issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (Biological Sciences) Vol 364 No 1516 (February 27, 2009) was devoted to current research of natural camouflage. Titled Animal Camouflage: Current Issues and New Perspectives and compiled by scientists Martin Stevens and Sami Merilaita, it consists of fifteen papers, all of which are now online at the journal's website. A book is also being prepared. Here is a list of the issue's contents:  

Introduction
• Martin Stevens and Sami Merilaita. Animal camouflage: current issues and new perspectives

Articles
• R.T. Hanlon, C.C. Chiao, L.M. Mäthger, A Barbosa, K.C. Buresch, and C. Chubb. Cephalopod dynamic camouflage: bridging the continuum between background matching and disruptive coloration. 
• S. Zylinski, D. Osorio, and A.J. Shohet. Perception of edges and visual texture in the camouflage of the common cuttlefish, Sepia officinalis.
• Tom Troscianko, Christopher P. Benton, P. George Lovell, David J. Tolhurst, and Zygmunt Pizlo. Camouflage and visual perception. 
• Devi Stuart-Fox and Adnan Moussalli. Camouflage, communication and thermoregulation: lessons from colour changing organisms. 
• Marc Théry and Jérôme Casas. The multiple disguises of spiders: web colour and decorations, body colour and movement.
• Martin Stevens and Sami Merilaita. Defining disruptive coloration and distinguishing its functions.
• Innes C. Cuthill and Aron Székely. Coincident disruptive coloration.
• Roy R. Behrens. Revisiting Abbott Thayer: non-scientific reflections about camouflage in art, war and zoology.
• Richard J. Webster, Alison Callahan, Jean-Guy J. Godin, and Thomas N. Sherratt. Behaviourally mediated crypsis in two nocturnal moths with contrasting appearance. 
• Nina Stobbe, Marina Dimitrova, Sami Merilaita, and H. Martin Schaefer. Chromaticity in the UV/blue range facilitates the search for achromatically background-matching prey in birds. 
• Hannah M Rowland. From Abbott Thayer to the present day: what have we learned about the function of countershading? 
• Ariel Tankus and Yehezkel Yeshurun. Computer vision, camouflage breaking and countershading. 
• Tim Caro. Contrasting coloration in terrestrial mammals. 
• Graeme D Ruxton. Non-visual crypsis: a review of the empirical evidence for camouflage to senses other than vision.