Predation places significant selection pressures on prey species and many have evolved incredible and diverse colour patterns in response. A fascinating example of such adaptive colouration and morphology is masquerade, a camouflage strategy in which organisms resemble innocuous and inedible objects, such as leaves or twigs. Masquerading prey avoid predation by being misclassified as irrelevant parts of the environment, rather than as food. Here we assess a putative case of masquerade in the North Island lichen moth, Declana atronivea (Geometridae), an endemic New Zealand species with intricate black and white forewings that appear to resemble lichen. Lichen masquerade is a type of ‘element imitation’ in which the object being mimicked forms a common element of the environmental pattern. However, unlike discrete objects, such as leaves and twigs, lichen may be difficult to distinguish as a distinct entity. This raises the question of whether D. atronivea can be said to look like ‘a’ lichen, or whether its body colouration appears as a component of a larger patch of lichen. In this case, does the lichen resemblance function as a form of masquerade, or is it an example of background matching? Using laboratory experiments with domestic chicks (Gallus gallus) as predators, we investigated whether D. atronivea moths avoid predation by being misclassified as lichen. We exposed naïve and experienced chicks to D. atronivea and compared their responses, predicting that if the moths do benefit from masquerade, chicks with previous experience of lichen would take longer to attack. Our hypothesis was not supported; there was no significant difference in predator interaction regardless of prior experience, suggesting that, in the absence of a matching background, D. atronivea do not benefit from masquerading as lichen. Rather, this may be a case of context-dependent misclassification, or perhaps the forewing colouration promotes concealment through crypsis.

捕食对猎物种类施加了巨大的选择压力，并且许多捕食者已经演化出令人难以置信的多样化颜色模式。这种适应性着色和形态的一个引人入胜的例子是假面舞会，一种伪装策略，其中的生物类似于无害和不可食用的物体，例如树叶或树枝。伪装成猎物的动物会被误认为与环境无关的部分，而不是食物，从而避免了被捕食。在这里，我们评估了北岛地衣蛾（Declana atronivea）假装的假面舞会案例。（Geometridae），一种新西兰特有种，有复杂的黑白前爪，看起来像地衣。地衣化装舞会是一种“元素模仿”，其中被模仿的物体构成了环境模式的共同元素。但是，与离散对象（例如树叶和树枝）不同，地衣可能难以区分为不同的实体。这就提出了一个问题，即可以说D. atronivea看起来像'a'地衣，还是它的体色是较大的地衣中的一部分。在这种情况下，地衣相似性是否可以作为化装舞会的形式使用？还是背景匹配的一个例子？使用实验室实验，以家禽（Gallus gallus）为食肉动物，我们调查了是否菜青虫飞蛾被误分类为地衣，从而避免了捕食。我们将幼稚和有经验的雏鸡暴露于A. atronivea，并比较了它们的反应，并预测，如果飞蛾确实从化装舞会中受益，具有地衣经验的雏鸡将需要更长的攻击时间。我们的假设不受支持；无论先前的经验如何，捕食者之间的相互作用都没有显着差异，这表明，在没有相配背景的情况下，假单胞菌不能从伪装成地衣中受益。相反，这可能是与上下文相关的错误分类的情况，或者可能是前翅的着色促进了隐孢子虫的隐瞒。