ArticleBehavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology
Dazzle camouflage, target tracking, and the confusion effect.
Article in Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 77 citations in OpenAlex.
- Zebra stripes: the questions raised by the answers.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- The Adaptive Significance of Tail-Flagging: A Test in European Rabbits (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Dynamic colour change in zebrafish (Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Dazzling damselfish: investigating motion dazzle as a defence strategy in humbug damselfish (PeerJ · 2024Article
- Article
- The origin of black and white coloration of the Asian tiger mosquitoBeilstein journal of nanotechnology · 2023Article
- Do bovids evolve hindquarter markings for anti-predation?Current zoology · 2022Article
- Motion: enhancing signals and concealing cues.Biology open · 2021Article
- The evolution of patterning during movement in a large-scale citizen science game.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- In the corner of the eye: camouflaging motion in the peripheral visual field.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- The key role of behaviour in animal camouflage.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2019Article
- Dynamic colour change and the confusion effect against predation.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Article
- Article
- Ecological significance of dorsal polymorphism in a Batesian mimic snake.Current zoology · 2018Article
- How camouflage works.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Review
- Diverted by dazzle: perceived movement direction is biased by target pattern orientation.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2017Article
- Dazzle camouflage and the confusion effect: the influence of varying speed on target tracking.Animal behaviour · 2017Article
- The confusion effect when attacking simulated three-dimensional starling flocks.Royal Society open science · 2017Article
- Contrast, contours and the confusion effect in dazzle camouflage.Royal Society open science · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The influence of coloration on the ecology and evolution of moving animals in groups is poorly understood. Animals in groups benefit from the "confusion effect," where predator attack success is reduced with increasing group size or density. This is thought to be due to a sensory bottleneck: an increase in the difficulty of tracking one object among many. Motion dazzle camouflage has been hypothesized to disrupt accurate perception of the trajectory or speed of an object or animal. The current study investigates the suggestion that dazzle camouflage may enhance the confusion effect. Utilizing a computer game style experiment with human predators, we found that when moving in groups, targets with stripes parallel to the targets' direction of motion interact with the confusion effect to a greater degree, and are harder to track, than those with more conventional background matching patterns. The findings represent empirical evidence that some high-contrast patterns may benefit animals in groups. The results also highlight the possibility that orientation and turning may be more relevant in the mechanisms of dazzle camouflage than previously recognized.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.