Simulating the Formation of Protective Colors:Improvement of Experiments in Teaching

Students are very interested in the Inquiry experiment of Simulating the formation of protective colors.However,it is often influenced by the subjective factors of students in practice,so the simulation experiment is improved twice in teaching.After the second improvement,the experiment achieves good results.

Partial Masquerading and Background Matching in Two Asian Box Turtle Species(Cuora spp.)

Animals living in heterogeneous natural environments adopt different camouflage strategies against different backgrounds,and behavioral adaptation is crucial for their survival.However,studies of camouflage strategies have not always quantified the effect of multiple strategies used together.In the present study,we used a human visual model to quantify similarities in color and shape between the carapace patterns of two Cuora species and their preferred habitats.Our results showed that the color of the middle stripe on the carapace of Cuora galbinifrons(Indochinese box turtle)was significantly similar to the color of their preferred substrates.Meanwhile,the middle stripe on the carapace of C.mouhotii(keeled box turtle)contrasted more with their preferred substrates,and the side stripe matched most closely with the environment.Furthermore,the carapace side stripe of C.galbinifrons and the carapace middle stripe of C.mouhotii highly contrasted with their preferred substrates.We quantified the similarity in shape between the highcontrast stripes of both Cuora species and leaves from their habitats.The carapace middle stripe of C.mouhotii was most similar in shape to leaves from the broadleaves substrate,and the carapace side stripe of C.galbinifrons was the most similar in shape to leaves from the bamboo-leaves substrate.We determined that these species adopt partial masquerading when their entire carapace is exposed and partially match their background when they semi-cover themselves in leaf litter.To the best of our knowledge,this is the first study to demonstrate that partial masquerading and background matching improve the camouflage effect of Asian box turtles in their preferred habitats.This is a novel study focusing on the influence of the shape and color of individual carapace segments on reducing detectability and recognition.

Manufacturing Process of Floating Flower Art

Floating flower art belongs to a category of embossing art,which is a kind of garden art that makes plant materials into flower decorations after treatment.In this paper,the whole technological process of making floating flower products was described in detail,and the unique manufacturing process of Japanese embossing brand "Sola Cube" was analyzed,in order to provide some theoretical reference for floating flower lovers and promote its development in China.