Data to accompany: Rapid body color change provides lizards with facultative crypsis in the eyes of their avian predators

Color change serves many antipredator functions and may allow animals to
better match environments or disrupt outlines to prevent detection. Rapid
color change could potentially provide camouflage to animals that
frequently move among microhabitats. Determining the adaptiveness of
whole-animal rapid color changes in natural habitats with respect to
predator visual systems would greatly broaden our fundamental
understanding of the evolution of rapid color change. We tested whether
whole-body color change provides water anoles (Anolis aquaticus) with
camouflage against avian predators, and whether these rapid changes allow
them to shift between environment matching and edge disruption. We
manipulated A. aquaticus placement in natural microhabitats and used
digital image analysis to quantify color matching, pattern matching, and
edge disruption produced by microhabitat-induced color change. Color
change reduced lizard detectability to predators in microhabitat-specific
ways. Environment matching was favored when lizards were in solid-colored
microhabitats, regardless of exposure to predators. Edge disruption was
instead induced by high exposure and varied by body region. We provide the
first evidence that rapid color change permits a tetrapod to flexibly
employ the most optimal camouflaging strategy by form (e.g., color
matching vs. edge disruption) to minimize detection in the eyes of its
predators.