Conspicuousness and Concealment: The Visual Ecology of Signaling and Camouflage

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Project Summary: Conspicuousness and Concealment: The Visual Ecology ofSignaling and CamouflageAll visual tasks that animals perform take place in natural scenes.Consequently, the visual systems of animals are adapted for efficient(often nearly optimal) analysis of the scenes they view in naturalcircumstances. Animals are rarely concerned with general sceneproperties, however. Rather, most objects of visual interest are otheranimals or plant food items such as fruits or flowers. Sometimes thevisual object is decorated to become a strong signal. Other times, itmay conceal itself using patterns that are confused with its naturalbackground - it is camouflaged. Systems of signaling and camouflagemust contend with both vision of other animals and properties of thebackground. Furthermore, neither the background nor the organism has aconstant appearance because of continuous variations in the patterns ofillumination falling upon them. These changing conditions stronglyinfluence the visual appearances of scenes and signals.This project considers the interrelationships among illuminants, scenes,signals, and animal vision. Research will concentrate on marine systemsthat offer excellent preliminary understanding of vision, color, andbehavioral context: coral reef fishes, mantis shrimps, and cuttlefish.The primary goals are to learn how colors (i.e. spectral reflectances)and patterns of animals are adapted for enhanced conspicuousness orconcealment, and how visual systems of animals are specialized to detectsignals and to break camouflage. The power of this approach is that itcompares a diverse selection of animals, all of which must form andrecognize biological signals in shallow, clear marine waters. Theresearch will be a pioneering effort to learn how systems of vision,signaling, and camouflage operate in extremely colorful (or wellcamouflaged) marine species in the specific contexts of their naturalilluminants and backgrounds. The proposed research will contributesignificantly to the fields of sensory biology, visual ecology, andanimal behavior. It will similarly be of special interest to engineersand scientists working in remote sensing, machine vision, and artificialsystems of object detection (including camouflaged objects). It willcontribute to the training of graduate students and enhance the researchexperiences of undergraduates working in the P.I.s laboratory, includingwomen and minority students. (who are already involved with similarresearch in this laboratory). Last - and far from least - the projectholds promise for stimulating scientific interest in the general publicand all those interested in animal vision, color, and crypsis.