About

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A strikingly iridescent Rose chafer, Cetonia aurata.
All photos by Karin Kjernsmo, unless otherwise stated.

I'm a behavioural and evolutionary ecologist working in the CamoLab at University of Bristol. I'm mainly interested in selection imposed by visually-hunting predators on different types of protective colouration, but I'm also interested in natural selection on related behavioural anti-predator adaptations, such as habitat choice of prey with respect to visual characteristics of the available backgrounds.

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Common chameleon, Chamaeleo chamaeleon, known for its crypsis.
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Example of aposematism in the postman butterfly, Heliconius melpomene
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Eyespot display in the Owl butterfly, Caligo sp.

Protective coloration, such as crypsis, aposematism and eyespots (shown in the images above), are examples of adaptations that helps prey animals to avoid predator attacks. The adaptive value of these protective traits is determined by how predators respond to them, implying that the visual and cognitive abilities of predators should be an important driving force on the selection pressure of the traits. By observing the behavioural responses of predators towards various colour patterns, I strive to provide detailed studies on how and why such colour patterns work to protect prey, and how effective they are.

Currently, I am working on a BBSRC funded project called 'Concealing 3D shape' in which we investigate ways to optimise camouflage for a given 3D shape - but also what makes objects easy to detect.