Plate 4 — Views of specimen no. 2: a, on dark mixed sand, partly covered with this material (after two days); b, on white glass plate, shortly after transfer to this following sojourn on dark sand; c, on coarse gravel (after two days); d, on white glass plate, shortly after transfer to this, following sojourn on coarse gravel. (Compare this with b. In d, the gravel pattern has persisted to some degree, despite an immediate partial disappearance of this).
Featured on PDR in the collection Flatfish Camouflage Experiments (1911)
This great series of photographs comes from a 1911 paper in the Journal of Experimental Zoology by American ichthyologist and zoologist Francis Bertody Sumner. The images were captured a year earlier at the Naples Zoological Station in Italy and back home at the U.S. fisheries Laboratory at Woods Hole, in a series of experiments in which Sumner puts a various types of flounder through their paces as regards camouflage ability. Placing them against bold and striking patterns (more than they'd experience in nature), Sumner photographed them at various states of adapting to their new backgrounds — and concluded that the fish with the most favourable adaptive qualities was a small species of flounder named Rhomboidichthys podas. Although the fact that the photographs are in black…
Also appearing in the collection…
Plate 4 — Views of specimen no. 2: a, on dark mixed sand, partly covered with this material (after two days); b, on white glass plate, shortly after transfer to this following sojourn on dark sand; c, on coarse gravel (after two days); d, on white glass plate, shortly after transfer to this, following sojourn on coarse gravel. (Compare this with b. In d, the gravel pattern has persisted to some degree, despite an immediate partial disappearance of this).
Artist
Date
1911
From
Journal of Experimental Zoology
