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Article: Special-Occasion Dress
- Article from:
- Natural History
- Article date:
- June 1, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright American Museum of Natural History Jun 2009. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Caecilians are legless tropical amphibians that live mostly underground. Yet some of them sport bright stripes or solids in shades of yellow, pink, or blue-surprising, since visual signals aren't much use in their dark tunnels.
The reason for such gaudy attire seems to lie in the recent observation that caecilians are not entirely subterranean, say Katharina C. Wollenberg of the Technical University of Braunschweig in Germany and G. John Measey of the South African National Biodiversity Institute. Many species occasionally crawl on the surface during the day, an easier- though much riskier- alternative to underground travel. Wollenberg and Measey think that even sporadic appearances in ...