The masquerade game: marine mimicry adaptation between egg-cowries and octocorals.

ABSTRACT: Background. Background matching, as a camouflage strategy, is one of the most outstanding examples of adaptation, where little error or mismatch means high vulnerability to predation. It is assumed that the interplay of natural selection and adaptation are the main evolutionary forces shaping the great diversity of phenotypes observed in mimicry; however, there may be other significant processes that intervene in the development of mimicry such as phenotypic plasticity. Based on observations of background mismatching during reproduction events of egg-cowries, sea snails of the family Ovulidae that mimic the octocoral where they inhabit, we wondered if they match the host species diversity. Using observations in the field and molecular systematics, we set out to establish whether the differ

SUBMITTER: Sanchez JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4975025 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature