Collaborative Research: IDBR: New Technology to Measure Oganismal Color Phenotypes: 3D, Hyperspectral, UV-Vis, Virtual Reality Models of Organismal Coloration

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). This project is a collaboration between investigators at Yale University and at Duke University. Color is a crucial feature of many multicellular organisms. Scientific description of organism color requires detailed documentation of both the spectral and spatial variation in reflectance of the surface of the organism. Because many organisms use colors in communication and camouflage, organism color should be described over the entire visible spectrum of the organisms themselves, their predators, and ecological partners. Currently, there are no accepted technological methods for capturing detailed spectral data and spatial geometry at the same time. This project will develop a new technology to capture simultaneously an accurate, three-dimensional (3D) virtual model of organism surface geometry, and detailed data on the spatial variation in the spectral reflectance over the surface of the organism. The project will combine 3D laser scanning, hyperspectral imaging, and 3D surface modeling to record the color of diverse organisms. Beyond red, green and blue (RGB) components and brightness information for each pixel, each hyperspectral image captures an entire reflectance spectrum. The research will also implement and further develop a new imaging technology that uses computational methods to capture the entire hyperspectral data cube in a single exposure. The research will focus specifically on birds, which have great color diversity and complex four color cone visual systems. Using these unique data sets, new mathematical tools will be developed for the spatial and comparative analysis of variation in color over the surface of the organism as it appears to the visual systems of organisms themselves. These new tools will be applied in pilot studies of avian plumage color variation, mechanism, and evolution. The proposed technology has the potential to transform the way biologists quantify, analyze, and study the color of organisms. The color data sets will be permanently curated at Yale University, and available for other researchers and the public. The results will be published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and will be made available to larger audiences through popular science journals like Scientific American and Natural History. Results will also be communicated locally to ethnically diverse, urban, and economically disadvantaged communities in New Haven, CT through a new Yale Peabody Museum exhibit.