Stick insects are renowned masters of camouflage, however very little research has been done on what type of camouflage they use (as there is multiple forms), and how they are viewed by their predators. This project is interested in how aspects of their colour and shape influences their overall appearance and therefore their camouflage. When looking for prey, predators will form search images which help them cut down time and energy when searching in the environment. The use of camouflage is there to defeat these search images.
One emerging method to test this, is the use of citizen computer games. Using a novel citizen science computer experiment that presented insect “prey” to humans against natural backgrounds in specific sequences, we are able to test a range of key hypotheses concerning the interactions between predator learning, camouflage and various morphs. Nobody has a used a game like this for research here in New Zealand. A game like this would allow me to gather a huge dataset, and would complement the other research that I have been doing in the field.
Here is a page from a researcher’s website from the UK, whose lab group use games like these in their research:
https://www.sensoryecology.com/games/
Our team is eagerly building a similar game using MERN (MongoDB,Express,React and NodeJS) as our primary technology stack.