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Though many prey species use camouflage to escape predation, the role of non-visual camouflage in ecological systems remains understudied, potentially overlooking important mechanisms mediating interactions between species. For instance, some insect prey species use chemical camouflage to pacify predatory ants, which can be important for mediating mutualistic relationships between insect herbivores and ants. However, the effectiveness of this anti-predation mechanism may depend on the breadth of the herbivore’s diet, where herbivores that feed on many plant species can have mismatched, ineffective camouflage when migrating to new host species with different chemistry. Here I studied the potential for chemical camouflage to mediate the mutualism between phloem-feeding treehoppers and ants on different host plant species, expecting treehopper survival to decrease when transferred to new host species near ant nests. Relative to controls, treehopper survival was lower when transferred to a new host species in 3 of 4 trials. Despite lupine being a high-nitrogen host, treehopper survival was lower on lupine when transferred from both rabbitbrush and mule’s ear. This was consistent with expectations from mismatched chemical camouflage. However, I did not expect that treehoppers transferred from rabbitbrush to mule’s ear would have higher survival, a result that reflects other mechanisms mediating the mutualism. These results suggest that chemical camouflage may be an important factor mediating the treehopper-ant mutualism. Much additional study is needed to reveal the overall role of such non-visual types of crypsis in ecological systems.
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