Some animals can communicate via color patches on their skin. For example, everybody knows what is going on with you when you suddenly blush. Just kidding. Of course, I don’t talk about humans. The paper of the day is about the common chameleon. In color communication (which you also find in insects, birds,…) there are two different strategies: I) adapt your color to different situations, II) have a color pattern which you just show in specific situations and otherwise hide/conceal it. Chameleon colors belong to the first type: they change them according to the season, background and social signaling, instead of concealing them. But what about the lateral white stripes? (see figure) Tammy Keren-Rotem, et al. (2018) analyzed the appearance of white spots in chameleons in different situations (season and social context). They showed that male and female chameleons consistently display the white badges, while body colors and patterns change. However, while mating, the white badges are concealed. What is the meaning of this? It could be that the white badges are used to identify individuals, as they are stable in shape within individuals but vary between individuals. It could also be, that the fact, that the white badges are proportional to the total body size, allows conclusions about individual quality, fighting ability and/or dominance. The authors explain their findings by the multitasking hypothesis: The information transfer in one color pattern is constrained by the presence of another color pattern. That means, when I would be a chameleon, the white stripes may help to show my quality. However, my lack of multitasking ability restricts my communication when I use stripes and color and I can not clearly transmit my mating intentions. Therefore, I get rid of the white stripes when I find a nice mate. That is the idea. Proof is still needed.
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IdeaI love to increase my general science knowledge by reading papers from different fields of science. Here I share some of them. Archiv
März 2018
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