Abstract
Animal camouflage in mollusks in the Family Ovulidae involves imitating the color and pattern of their host coral to evade predators. However, the extent to which they adapt to host color across regions and coral species remains unquantified. The camouflage efficiency of Phenacovolva rosea across various coral hosts along the coast of Vietnam was assessed. A total of 57 Ph. rosea specimens collected from five coastal sites in Vietnam were photographed with their hosts in the field. The colors of mollusk and host were comparatively analyzed to study contrasts between them. Generalized Linear Model (GLM) analysis investigated factors influencing camouflage efficiency, including host species and region. This revealed a significant effect of coral species identity on mollusk camouflage efficiency, with the lowest contrast recorded for an Astrogorgia sp. and the highest for Menella sp. Region did not significantly influence camouflage efficiency. Linear regression analysis demonstrated that the coral host color explained 30% of the total variance in mollusk color. This study further revealed that Ph. rosea effectively adapts its color to match the coral hosts. The mechanism behind this adaptation remains unknown, but the presumed phenotypic plasticity allowed by nutritional homochromy is the most likely candidate. Poor color adaptation to Menella sp. possibly arises from recent individual migration, maladaptive traits, or alternative color strategies. Overall, phenotypic plasticity in Ph. rosea may play a significant role in survival on different host species in different environments.
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The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank the staff of Russian-Vietnamese tropical center for providing facilities and organizational assistance during field work. We thank the reviewers for their valuable comments. The work was supported by Russian Science Foundation (Grant number [22-74-00113]).
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This work was supported by Russian Science Foundation (Grant number [22-74-00113]).
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by SSZ, MSE and ZSA. The first draft of the manuscript was written by SZ and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Zvonareva, S.S., Mekhova, S.E. & Zaitsev, S.A. Phenotypic plasticity of Phenacovolva rosea results in various camouflage efficiencies on different coral host species. Mar Biol 171, 71 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-024-04393-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-024-04393-7