Project "April Fool's Day 2019 - BioBlitz"

Camouflage and mimicry are ways to deceive others. There are numerous species that camouflage or mimic other species to achieve their survival.
We ourselves, observers, are often surprised when we realize what happens during our field endeavors. I mean that so many other situations we do not even realize, we are fooled.
This project pays homage to the species that camouflage and mimic, and challenges us to find them. I selected some species, perhaps more visible, found on almost every continent.
Feel free to join the project and, also, suggest camouflage and mimicry species of your interest. Good luck to all of us!
The distinction between camouflage and mimicry is not always clear when only the model and the mimic are at hand. When the receiver is known and its reactions understood, however, the distinction is quite clear: in mimicry the signals have a special significance for the receiver and for the sender, which has evolved the signals in order to be perceived by the receiver; in camouflage the sender seeks to avoid detection by the receiver through imitation of what is neutral background to the receiver. [1]
In seeking to differentiate between camouflage and mimicry, camouflage can be consider as a more 'passive' attribute, in which an organism has evolved to blend in against a background, whereas mimicry has a more 'active' component to it, whereby an organism copies a specific species or behaviour.[2]

[1] https://www.britannica.com/science/mimicry
[2] https://treesforlife.org.uk/forest/forest-ecology/mimicry/
[3] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2016.2080

Posted on March 30, 2019 03:34 AM by nelson_wisnik nelson_wisnik

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