Supporting Data: Dazzling damselfish: Investigating motion dazzle as a defence strategy in humbug damselfish

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High-contrast body patterning is prevalent in nature. When combined with movement this patterning can disrupt visual cues of observers and reduce the likelihood of identification, a phenomenon called motion dazzle. These dazzle patterns generate different forms of optical illusion and can mislead observers about the shape, location and direction of the target. However, it is also possible that when these highly contrasted animals move against similarly contrasted backgrounds that there is further disruption to visual signals.

In this study, we use the humbug damselfish (Dascyllus aruanus) to model motion cues of its high contrast body stripes against high contrast background gratings of different spatial frequencies and orientations, from the perspective of a predator. from the perspective of a predator. We also assessed whether humbugs modified their behaviour in response to the different backgrounds.

We presented humbug damselfish with different backgrounds with varying spatial frequencies. We used a motion model to assess the motion dazzle attained from high contrast backgrounds and whether motion cues are also disrupted at the edges of animals. We also explored humbug behaviour, specifically, whether humbugs moved closer to particular backgrounds or if they moved more in response to different backgrounds.

This dataset contains two sheets; 1) motion modelling data and 2) the behavioural data for each trial (aggregated every 15 seconds).