Bugs use several colours to protect themselves - study on shield bugs

[FfFfFfFF 58,118]

New research has revealed for the first time that shield bugs use a variety of colors throughout their lives to avoid predators.

Shield bugs are often bright, colorful insects that use colors to warn off their distastefulness to predators. The paper found that it is impossible to predict what an adult bug will look like based on their color when young.

The joint research between scientists  combined information on color in young and adults for more than 100 species of shield bugs worldwide. They then used field work in Canberra, with white-winged choughs, to measure how likely these birds were to attack adult and nymphs of one Australian species of shield bug, the cotton harlequin bug.

Many animals such as frogs, insects and sea slugs use bright colorations to advertise toxicity or distastefulness. In theory, warning signals of prey that live in the same environment should be the same because predators can learn more effectively to avoid one type of pattern, instead of many different ones.

While this idea has been used to explain the great examples of mimicry in nature, and why distantly related species end up having the same warning colors, such as black and red, or black and yellow, researchers say there are multiple examples of variation in local warning signals and an overlooked type of variation is that across life stages.

"If predators were able to learn to avoid only one type of warning color, we would expect nymphs and adults to look similar in many species," Dr. Medina said.

S

[DC 25,164]

Aw that's... cute