Little is known of the adaptive significance or the genetic and environmental determinants of the color phases. The adaptive significance is most likely related to protection from diurnal, visually hunting predators, such as many species of birds. Experiments have shown that when such a predator has fed upon prey of one color, it is less likely to capture another individual of the same species if that individual is of a different color. The merits of a conehead being brown or green thus depend not only on the color of the individual's surroundings, which are generally brown and green, but also upon the color of its neighbors and the previous experiences of its visually hunting predators. Anyone who searches for coneheads visually will soon confirm that it is difficult to look for brown and green individuals simultaneously, that the color sought is influenced by the color of previous captures, and that individuals of the other color are less likely to be detected.
Individuals sometimes change color during their development.
Apparently no one has recorded a conehead molting from brown to green. Under natural conditions this results in winter males being brown and summer males being dimorphic. The ovipositors of coneheads are slender, nearly straight, and bear no teeth. It and other species that have been seen ovipositing insert their eggs between the stems and sheaths of root leaves of cattails or grasses. The ovipositors of Belocephalus species are stouter than those of other genera, but no one has observed their use.