Attitude and Concealing Coloration

Abstract

THE part played by living insects in adopting attitudes which increase the effect of the colour and pattern is often overlooked in discussing the relation of coloration of insects to natural selection. Mr. J. J. S. Cornes has given a striking new example from New Zealand of a phenomenon recorded by by Mr. A. H. Hamm¹, for English moths when resting on the bark of trees. It was recorded that the vast majority of the individuals of the common winter moth, Hybernia leucophearia, rest with the body horizontal, so that the lines of pattern on the wings are brought into parallelism with the dark shadows in the abundant vertical cracks of the bark on which they rest. If the wings were spread horizontally, as is so often the case with moths of this group, the main lines of the pattern would cut across the main lines of the background.