The Biology and Purpose of Patterns and Colors

“In the past 20 years, the field of animal coloration research has been propelled forward very rapidly by technological advances,” said corresponding author Tim Caro, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology. “These include digital imaging, innovative laboratory and field studies and large-scale comparative analyses, each of which are allowing completely new questions to be asked.”

Coloration is a complicated biological trait. Animals use it for camouflage, to send warning signals, attract mates, send social signals, regulate their body temperature and thwart pests, among other uses.

Among the advances, the study notes that scientists now recognize that other animals see the world differently from humans. Researchers now understand the mechanisms underlying color production, and color measurements collected at a geographic scale are shedding light on the dynamics of evolutionary processes.

For instance, scientists can now pose questions about the evolution of camouflage based on what a prey’s main predator can see. They also see how gene changes underlying color production have parallels across unrelated species. Such research can contribute to advances in medicine, security, clothing and the military.

Challenges include learning how color is integrated with other sensory information. For instance, how a swallowtail butterfly responds to color can change depending on how its host plant smells. Additional challenges include a better understanding of the neural mechanisms by which color influences behavior, and creating techniques to better analyze the role of color in animal patterns and motion.

A workshop where the study’s ideas were formulated was funded by the Institute of Advanced Study in Berlin (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.)