Abstract
Cuttlefish change their appearance rapidly for camouflage on different backgrounds. Effective camouflage for a benthic organism such as cuttlefish must deceive predators viewing from above as well as from the side, thus the choice of camouflage skin pattern is expected to account for horizontal and vertical background information. Previous experiments dealt only with the former, and here we explore some influences of background patterns oriented vertically in the visual background. Two experiments were conducted: (1) to determine whether cuttlefish cue visually on vertical background information; and (2) if a visual cue presented singly (either horizontally or vertically) is less, equally or more influential than a visual cue presented both horizontally and vertically. Combinations of uniform and checkerboard backgrounds (either on the bottom or wall) evoked disruptive coloration in all cases, implying that high-contrast, non-uniform backgrounds are responded to with priority over uniform backgrounds. However, there were differences in the expression of disruptive components if the checkerboard was presented simultaneously on the bottom and wall, or solely on the wall or the bottom. These results demonstrate that cuttlefish respond to visual background stimuli both in the horizontal and vertical plane, a finding that supports field observations of cuttlefish and octopus camouflage.
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- AHB:
-
Anterior head bar
- AMB:
-
Anterior mantle bar
- ATML:
-
Anterior transverse mantle line
- M :
-
Mean
- MMS:
-
Median mantle stripes
- PMS:
-
Paired mantle spots
- PTML:
-
Posterior transverse mantle line
- WAT:
-
White arm triangle
- SE:
-
Standard error
- WHB:
-
White head bar
- WMB:
-
White mantle bar
- WPT:
-
White posterior triangle
- WS:
-
White square
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Acknowledgments
AB is grateful for funding from POCI 2010 and Fundo Social Europeu through the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal (SFRH/BD/11303/2002). This paper fulfils partial requirements for a PhD degree at the University of Porto for AB. LL is grateful to the Grass Foundation for the Summer Fellowship that enabled this research. RH acknowledges partial funding from the Sholley Foundation. Special thanks to Emily Fain and the Animal Care Staff of the Marine Resources Center for help with animal care. The experiments comply with the Principles of Animal Care, publication no. 86-23, of the National Institutes of Health, and also with the current laws of the USA. Thanks to Lydia Mäthger for unpublished data and for constructive comments on the final draft.
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Both A. Barbosa and L. Litman are first authors.
An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00359-008-0320-8
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Barbosa, A., Litman, L. & Hanlon, R.T. Changeable cuttlefish camouflage is influenced by horizontal and vertical aspects of the visual background. J Comp Physiol A 194, 405–413 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-007-0311-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-007-0311-1