VERY late to the party, but a lil video abstract featuring a) a summary of our findings and b) a lot of me fangirling over leafy perfection is now up on my YouTube channel here: youtu.be/Av9NHy0Qi9I?... @plosbiology.org @uniofstandrews.bsky.social

And of course, a huge shout out to @royalcom1851.bsky.social for giving me the freedom during this postdoc to ramble about whatever the hell I want (peer review permitting of course 😂) Any ideas/comments are super welcome as always! ❤️ 7/n @uniofstandrews.bsky.social

This was one the most fun things I’ve ever written, not least because I wrote most of it in Panama, with this gorgeous view, but also because I get to work with the Lennon & McCartney of academic writing, Graeme Ruxton and Nathan Bailey (not willing to disclose which is which). 🌴☺️ 6/n

Specifically, we hypothesise that sexual signalling a) constrains the evolution the specialist camouflage (e.g. masquerade), b) drives sexual dimorphism in camouflage and c) restricts adaptive crypsis polymorphism. Here is a smattering of the study systems we suggest could provide some answers. 5/n

BUT what about concealment strategies like camouflage? Here, the existing literature is a lot more hazy. We propose that in this scenario, sexual signals could act as an evolutionary ratchet, giving rise to subpar concealment... 🤷🏽🤷🏽🤷🏽 4/n

For aposematic species like this strawberry poison dart frog, this is not an issue. Here, sexier colours = more effective warning colouration. Thus, the two traits coevolve positively and there’s already lots of wonderful theoretical and empirical work to support this across various taxa. 🐸🦋🐝 3/n

We know sexual signals can can evolve in the face of naturally selected adversity. (I.e Stand out from the crowd = 💀 by predation), but is the reverse also true? Can survival adaptations also be constrained by ‘sexually selected adversity’? I.e. can surviving better make you less sexy? 💋 👀 2/n

Ah thanks so much Stu!

…and incase you don’t believe we’re actually friends, here are 80% of authors together, preaching all things Lep, in a fun video I made with @savebutterflies.bsky.social a few years ago. Nice to see our sentiment validated (and to see my jokes haven’t aged one bit…) youtu.be/AXDXL4CfMw8?...

And lastly, thanks to @royalcom1851.bsky.social for funding and all BCI staff at STRI for their wonderful hospitality! 14/n

Nevertheless, I certainly would not have got very far without the incredible support of Nathan Bailey and Graeme Ruxton, who really helped bring this work to life. Also huge kudos to summer intern student Lotte Rolfe for doing most of the legwork on the predation experiment. 💪🏼13/n

This is my most independent piece of work to date so on a personal level, I’m pretty proud of it. The (synergistic? 😜) blend of methodologies involved is also a nice nod to how I began my research career as a master student, and the amazing mentors I learnt from. 12/n

So then, the co-occurrence of traits with synergistic effects provide a viable mechanism through which exquisitely sophisticated adaptations, such as leaf masquerade, can evolve! 11/n

But most excitingly of all, we found that (controlling for phylogeny) colour and shape are evolutionarily correlated with path analysis suggesting that these leafy traits were acquired simultaneously during the evolution of leaf masquerade in katydids. 10/n