This was such a fun start to my @royalcom1851.bsky.social fellowship and involved plenty of stimulating discussions with Nathan Bailey and Graeme Ruxton. Also huge thanks to summer intern Lotte Rolfe for her militarian target checking efforts. Looking forward to the reviewer comments. 9/n

Together, these results show how synergy between trait components (ie colour and shape) can facilitate the evolution of complex adaptations such as masquerade, adding to existing mechanisms of composite trait evolution in other systems. 8/n

But most interestingly of all, we not only found an evolutionary association between colour and shape, but phylogenetic pathway analyses also indicate that these traits were acquired simultaneously during the evolution of leaf masquerade. 7/n

For these analyses, I managed to reach the pinnacle of scientific endeavour... I designed an online survey. Interestingly, when controlling for phylogeny, interactions between colouration and shape also seem to influence human perceptions of "leafiness" (see ms for details). 6/n

So, how did leaf masquerade and its component traits evolve? To explore this, we conduted morphological comparative analyses of 51 katydid species from BCI, Panama where multiple elaboratons and reductions in "leafiness" have taken place across the tree (this is crying out for a pun...). 5/n

The result was very simple: colour and shape synergistically interact to improve masquerade, confirming it is a composite trait. IE. Prey must be the correct colour (green) AND the correct shape (leaf-shaped) if they stand a chance at outfoxing their predators.... 4/n

The origin of complex composite adaptations has been an evolutionary biological puzzle for centuries. Leaf masquerade is one of the most spectcular examples (yes, ok, I'm biased) and lends itself nicely to both experimental and comparative study... (Photo cred: Hannah ter Hofstede) 2/n