Research Project
Full description According to the 'escape and radiate' hypothesis, potent chemical defences enable animals to be less dependent on matching visual backgrounds for camouflage. We investigated this idea in 12 species of nudibranch molluscs and found evidence supporting this hypothesis. Aposematic species were found on visual backgrounds that differed consistently in appearance from the visual background of undefended cryptic species. However, we found no difference in the variability of visual backgrounds between species with or without chemical defences. This suggests that warning colouration in eastern Australian Dorid nudibranchs correlates with broadly generalisable spatiochromatic properties of visual backgrounds.