Animal coloration: production, perception, function and application

Research on animal coloration is a vibrant area of biology currently involving evolutionary biologists, behavioural ecologists, psychologists, optical physicists, visual ecologists, geneticists and anthropologists. The proliferation of recent work requires that we take stock of the field, aiming to identify major themes, questions and future directions. This was the goal of the year-long Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin ‘focus group’ (2015–2016), in which many of the authors in this issue participated either as fellows or visitors. The result is this 19-chapter theme issue, in which we pinpoint the breakthroughs and challenges in animal coloration research, focusing on production, perception, function and evolution. We also explore animal coloration research as it applies to humans. This theme issue is by no means exhaustive but our goal has been to summarize and synthesize the state of animal coloration research in 2017 and to chart courses for the future.