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The camouflage of predators including lizards, angler fish, mantises including Hymenopus bicornis and the bird-dropping spider is described. "Adventitious protection", making use of materials from the environment, is illustrated with examples such as the decorator crabs and caddis fly larvae, which build tubes "of grains of sand, small shells ...
For example, the bright yellow of an American goldfinch, the startling orange of a juvenile red-spotted newt, the deep red of a cardinal and the pink of a flamingo are all produced by carotenoid pigments synthesized by plants. In the case of the flamingo, the bird eats pink shrimps, which are themselves unable to synthesize carotenoids.
Animal coloration, readily observable, soon provided strong and independent lines of evidence, from camouflage, mimicry and aposematism, that natural selection was indeed at work. [ 6 ] [ 7 ] [ 8 ] The historian of science Peter J. Bowler wrote that Darwin's theory "was also extended to the broader topics of protective resemblances and mimicry ...
These are well known in birds, as first described by Aristotle in the 4th century BC, [21] but also occur in fish. [22] A familiar example is the broken-wing display seen in nesting waders, plovers and doves such as the mourning dove. In this display, a bird walks away from its nest with one wing dragging on the ground.
When we see leaf-eating insects green, and bark-feeders mottled-grey; the alpine ptarmigan white in winter, the red-grouse the colour of heather, and the black-grouse that of peaty earth, we must believe that these tints are of service to these birds and insects in preserving them from danger.
Pitohuis, red and black birds whose toxic feathers and skin apparently comes from the poisonous beetles they ingest, could be included. [17] It has been proposed that aposematism played a role in human evolution, body odour carrying a warning to predators of large hominins able to defend themselves with weapons.
The bird-dropping spider Ornithoscatoides decipiens, the flower mantis Hymenopus bicornis and other camouflaged hunters are described. Chapter 7. Mimicry: the attributes of mimics. Cott follows Poulton in treating mimicry as basically the same as camouflage or "adaptive resemblance". Batesian mimicry and Mullerian mimicry are compared. The ...
Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom: An Exposition of the Laws of Disguise Through Color and Pattern; Being a Summary of Abbott H. Thayer's Discoveries is a book published ostensibly by Gerald H. Thayer in 1909, and revised in 1918, but in fact a collaboration with and completion of his father Abbott Handerson Thayer's major work.