For many birds, the fight for survival begins at the egg stage: avoiding predation is
paramount. At a broad phylogenetic level, selection by predators for egg camouflage …

Animal coloration serves many biological functions and must therefore balance potentially
competing selective pressures. For example, many animals have camouflage in which …

Camouflage helps animals to hide from predators and is therefore key to survival. Although
widespread convergence of animal phenotypes to their natural environment is well …

Achromatic (luminance) vision is used by animals to perceive motion, pattern, space and
texture. Luminance contrast sensitivity thresholds are often poorly characterised for …

Egg rejection is an effective and widespread antiparasitic defense to eliminate foreign eggs
from the nests of hosts of brood parasitic birds. Several lines of observational and critical …

Avian brood parasites lay their eggs in the nests of their hosts, which rear the parasite's
progeny. The costs of parasitism have selected for the evolution of defence strategies in …

Several of the most celebrated examples of visual mimicry, like mimetic eggs laid by avian
brood parasites and palatable insects mimicking distasteful ones, involve signals directed at …

Plumage patterns of melanerpine (Melanerpes-Sphyrapicus) woodpeckers are strikingly
diverse. Understanding the evolution and function of this diversity is challenging because of …

Avian egg colours and patterns are spectacularly diverse and provide a wonderful system to
study both the functional and mechanistic basis of animal colouration. In order to do this, it is …

The degree of resemblance between mimics and models provides valuable insight into the
evolutionary dynamics of mimicry signalling systems, but for many systems mimetic …