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 …

Animal signals may result from construction behaviour and can provide receivers with
essential information in various contexts. Here we explore the potential benefits of extended …

Diverse functions have been assigned to the visual appearance of webs, spiders and web
decorations, including prey attraction, predator deterrence and camouflage. Here, we review …

Many animals modify their environments, apparently to reduce predation risk, but the
success of such endeavors, and their impact on the density and distribution of populations …

Background The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is the most widely used information
source on the extinction risk of species. One of the uses of the Red List is to evaluate and …

Masquerading comes at various costs and benefits. The principal benefit being the
avoidance of predators. The orb-web spider Cyclosa ginnaga has a silver body and adds a …

The phylogenetic relationships amongst the New World spiny orb-weaving spiders
Micrathena and Chaetacis were assessed through parsimony and Bayesian analyses of …

A number of strategies that divert attacks of visually guided predators, such as birds, have
evolved multiple times in animals. Detritus web decorations built by certain orb‐web spider …

One Darwinian puzzle is that many prey are morphologically or behaviourally conspicuous.
Being conspicuous seems detrimental to prey with limited antipredator ability, because …

The presence of conspicuous colouration in predators is puzzling because natural selection
is expected to favour cryptic or disruptive colouration, making predators less detectable by …