Salience bias

Biological Parallel

Bright coloration dominates predator attention—aposematic species (poison dart frogs, monarch butterflies) exploit salience to advertise toxicity. But salience creates bias: predators overestimate the frequency of brightly colored prey because conspicuous individuals dominate memory. Cryptic species are numerically dominant but perceptually invisible. Salience warps frequency estimation: what's memorable seems common. The evolutionary arms race: prey minimize salience (crypsis) or maximize it (aposematism), nothing in between.