Anti-Predator Coloration and Behaviour: A Longstanding Topic with Many Outstanding Questions

Abstract

The study of anti-predator coloration and behaviour has a long and rich history in biology. It has from the very outset of Darwin’s theory of natural selection provided numerous areas to test mechanisms and function in evolution. While Darwin perhaps concentrated most of his attention regarding animal coloration on his theory of sexual selection (Darwin, 1871), his contemporaries placed much greater emphasis and time to explain the variety of ways that coloration and behaviour protected animals from attack from predators. Wallace in particular devoted considerable effort in discussing anti-predator coloration in nature, playing a leading role in developing key concepts regarding camouflage and warning signals (aposematism) (Wallace, 1867, 1877, 1889). Alongside him, and subsequently, other pioneers such as Bates and Poulton (Bates, 1862; Poulton, 1885, 1890) conducted experiments and put forward other key concepts relating to mimicry and various areas of protective coloration. The basis of our current ideas regarding anti-predator coloration and behaviour still stems in no small part from these and other pioneers. Defensive coloration continued to provide some of the most compelling evidence for evolution and adaptation, most notably the famous work of Kettlewell (1955, 1956) and others (e.g. Cook et al., 1986; Cook et al., 2012) on industrial melanism and the peppered moth Biston betularia. In the modern era, further examples incorporating modern advances such as genetics and molecular biology have continued this tradition (Nachman et al., 2003; Nosil and Crespi, 2006; Rosenblum, 2006). However, despite over 150 years of research, many questions remain in the study of anti-predator coloration, and behaviour and the subject is as active and vibrant a research area as it ever has been.