It is a fantastic story that transports us through space to California, and through time, about 1.23 million years ago. His heroes, twigs, disguise them. However, they move! The English -speaking world calls them stick insects, while the French refer more to them ashes fantas. The star of our history is one of its 3,100 species.
Long, a small mountain on the west coast of the American continent was divided into two mounts separated by a valley of about 30 kilometers wide. These two mounts, shelter and highway 154, are now near the city of Santa Barbara, covered with an ecosystem of coastal Chaparral brushes and shrubs.
In each of these mounts he lived two forms of this stick insect, which would be seen later Timema Cristinae. Like all their cousins, these insects without wings perfectly imitated the leaves in which they celebrated. An ideal camouflage to deceive their predators and a Saafly feast.
An intelligent trick
A delighted form with the wide dark green leaves of the California lilac (Ceanothus spinosus). His counterpart preferred to taste the very thin needle -shaped leaves of a rosaceae, Fasciculatum adenomotoma.
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