Cephalopods are unrivaled in the natural world in their ability to alter their visual appearance. These mollusks have evolved a complex system of dermal units under neural, hormonal, and muscular control to produce an astonishing variety of body patterns.
A new paper from Martin How is out this week - Dynamic Skin Patterns in Cephalopods
Many animals show innate colour preferences which may act to enhance the fitness of a naive animal during visual tasks such as predator avoidance, mate choice and foraging.
Our recent paper on the colour preference of the mantis shrimp Odontodactylus. scyllarus explores the relevance of colour preferences to behavioural tasks. Thanks to Lego for providing the coloured stimuli!
Two new papers from the group in this month's issue of JEB!
A new paper from David Wilby (and a front cover) on the optics of oil droplets - Wilby, D., Roberts, N.W. 2017 Optical influence of oil droplets on cone photoreceptor sensitivity. Journal of Experimental Biology 220: 1997-2004
And a lovely new paper from Martin How on disruptive coloration in reef fish - Phillips, G.A.C. How, M.J., Lange, J.E., Marshall, J., Cheney, K. 2017 Disruptive coloration in reef fish: does matching the background reduce predation risk? Journal of Experimental Biology 220: 1962-1974
New themed issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B is out - Animal coloration: production, perception, function and application’ compiled and edited by Tim Caro, Mary Caswell Stoddard and Devi Stuart-Fox
Check out our paper on the selection of different optical properties in mechanisms of structural colouration.
Kathryn D. Feller, Thomas M. Jordan, David Wilby, Nicholas W. Roberts
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 2017 372 20160336; DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2016.0336. Published 22 May 2017
