ArticleScientific reports2019
Dynamic colour change and the confusion effect against predation.
Article in Scientific reports, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 29 citations in OpenAlex.
- Hot temperature during development alters iridescence inPNAS nexus · 2026Article
- The Adaptive Significance of Tail-Flagging: A Test in European Rabbits (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- The flashy escape: support for dynamic flash coloration as anti-predator defence.Biology letters · 2024Article
- Outstanding issues in the study of antipredator defenses.Ecology and evolution · 2023Review
- Article
- Group size affects predation risk and foraging success in Pacific salmon at sea.Science advances · 2022Article
- Motion: enhancing signals and concealing cues.Biology open · 2021Article
- The anti-predation benefit of flash displays is related to the distance at which the prey initiates its escape.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Prey with hidden colour defences benefit from their similarity to aposematic signals.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Underwater caustics disrupt prey detection by a reef fish.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
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 confusion effect - the decreased attack-to-kill ratio of a predator with increase in prey group size - is thought to be one of the main reasons for the evolution of group living in animals. Despite much interest, the influence of prey coloration on the confusion effect is not well understood. We hypothesized that dynamic colour change in motion (due to interference coloration or flash marks), seen widely in many group living animals, enhances the confusion effect. Utilizing a virtual tracking task with humans, we found targets that dynamically changed colour during motion were more difficult to track than targets with background matching patterns, and this effect was stronger at larger group sizes. The current study thus provides the first empirical evidence for the idea that dynamic colour change can benefit animals in a group and may explain the widespread occurrence of dynamic colorations in group-living animals.
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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.