Animal camouflage has long been used to illustrate the power of natural selection, and
provides an excellent testbed for investigating the trade‐offs affecting the adaptive value of …

Selection for crypsis in varying environments has long been established as the main
evolutionary force promoting the huge variation in avian egg coloration. In several avian …

Many of the world's 10 000 bird species lay coloured or patterned eggs. The large diversity
of eggshell patterning among birds, achieved through pigment, has been attributed to a few …

Camouflage typically involves colour patterns that match the background. However, it has
been argued that concealment may be achieved by strategic use of apparently conspicuous …

Considering its widespread occurrence and importance in the animal kingdom, background
matching is clearly one of the most under-studied means of concealment. Background …

Background The exceptional diversity of coloration found in avian eggshells has long
fascinated biologists and inspired a broad range of adaptive hypotheses to explain its …

It is assumed that many birds attempt to conceal their nests by using camouflage. To our
knowledge, however, no previous experimental studies have explicitly tested this …

A commonly held principle in visual ecology is that communication compromises
camouflage: while visual signals are often conspicuous, camouflage provides concealment …

Animal camouflage represents one of the most important ways of preventing (or facilitating)
predation. It attracted the attention of the earliest evolutionary biologists, and today remains …

Countershading, the widespread tendency of animals to be darker on the side that receives
strongest illumination, has classically been explained as an adaptation for camouflage …