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The role of colour in insect pattern vision

颜色在昆虫图案视觉中的作用

基本信息

批准号：
BB/I009329/1
负责人：
Natalie Hempel De Ibarra
金额：
$ 42.89万
依托单位：
UNIVERSITY OF EXETER
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2011
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2011 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FI009329%2F1
关键词：
role colour insect pattern vision

项目摘要

A century ago Karl von Frisch advanced our understanding of animal sensory worlds demonstrating in classic experiments that bees see colours. Many insects as most other animals have colour vision and the perception of colour does not require complex higher brain functions. Insects are small-sized and equipped with compound eyes that give blurred views of a spatially complex world. How colourful are these views and how does an insect recognise colourful objects, patterns and shapes in a visual scene? These questions can be well studied in bees, an important insect model system in ecological, behavioural and physiological research. Foraging bees, as other pollinating insects, usually look for particular flowers to efficiently collect nectar and pollen. They will dismiss many other flowers during their search and not approach or land on them. Such flower constancy requires that floral features, e.g. colours, patterns and odours are learned and recognised by bees. This learning ability can be exploited to easily train bees to artificial food sources, as done by von Frisch, where different colours or patterns signal the presence of reward. Using such experimental methods and new tools to measure and quantify colours as they are perceived by bees, I shall investigate how patterns look to a bee if they are colourful, whether and when a bee sees or learns colours independently from patterns. A crucial hypothesis that I will test is whether pattern and colour vision are segregated in the bee visual system, e.g. whether and to which extent pattern vision in insects may be colour-blind, as has been suggested in the past. I shall also look at flowers through bee eyes and brain using optical and sensory models and make predictions of how detectable and disciminable floral colours and patterns are for bees. Detection is the main visual task if a flower is at a large distance and needs to be picked out from the background. In the first set of experiments I will train bees to detect a pattern which are placed on the back wall of one of two Y-maze arms. The other arm is empty. In the maze the bee will have to decide in which arm it sees the pattern. The distance to the pattern determines the size with which it is projected onto the bee eye. As long as the bee can detect a pattern it will enter the correct arm and find a sucrose reward. Moving the pattern further away the detection limit will be reached when the bee will choose both arms randomly. Detection limits will be determined for a variety of two-coloured patterns that consist of a central disc and a surrounding ring or a disc divided in two halfs, resembling the major types of flower displays as seen through the low-resolution eyes of bees. Colours will be varied systematically to understand how colour hue and colour contrast against the background influence pattern detectability. These parameters will be used to analyse colours and patterns in displays of intact wild flowers that I will record using UV-sensitive multispectral imaging. Pattern elements will be also varied in shape and relative size for identifying possible filter mechanisms in the visual system of the bee. In a second set of experiments bees will discriminate between these patterns. Only one pattern will be rewarded. If bees can distinguish them, they will show a clear preference for the rewarded pattern. These results will tell us, how spatial and colour cues in a pattern are perceived by the bee and which ones may be more important in some patterns. Knowing how bees perform pattern detection and discrimination, I will be able to explain how bees see and memorise complex colourful flower displays. The study will provide new insights the bees' perceptual abilities may have influenced the evolution of complex and colourful displays in flowers that aim to advertise themselves effectively to bees and other insect pollinators with excellent colour vision and learning capacity.

一个世纪前，卡尔·冯·弗里施（Karl von Frisch）在经典实验中证明了蜜蜂能看到颜色，从而推进了我们对动物感官世界的理解。许多昆虫和大多数其他动物一样具有色觉，对颜色的感知不需要复杂的高级大脑功能。昆虫体型小，拥有复眼，可以模糊地观察空间复杂的世界。这些视图有多丰富多彩，昆虫如何识别视觉场景中的彩色物体，图案和形状？蜜蜂是生态学、行为学和生理学研究中的重要昆虫模式系统，可以很好地研究这些问题。觅食蜜蜂和其他授粉昆虫一样，通常寻找特定的花朵来有效地收集花蜜和花粉。他们会在寻找的过程中丢弃许多其他的花，而不是接近或降落在它们上面。这种花的恒定性要求蜜蜂学习和识别花的特征，例如颜色，图案和气味。这种学习能力可以被利用来轻松地训练蜜蜂去寻找人工食物来源，正如冯·弗里施所做的那样，不同的颜色或图案表明奖励的存在。使用这样的实验方法和新的工具来测量和量化蜜蜂感知的颜色，我将研究蜜蜂如何看待图案，如果它们是彩色的，蜜蜂是否以及何时独立于图案看到或学习颜色。一个关键的假设，我将测试的是模式和颜色视觉是否分离的蜜蜂视觉系统，例如是否和在何种程度上的模式视觉在昆虫可能是色盲，在过去已经提出。我还将通过蜜蜂的眼睛和大脑使用光学和感官模型来观察花朵，并预测蜜蜂如何检测和识别花朵的颜色和图案。如果一朵花距离很远，需要从背景中挑选出来，检测是主要的视觉任务。在第一组实验中，我将训练蜜蜂检测放置在两个Y迷宫臂之一的后壁上的图案。另一只手臂是空的。在迷宫中，蜜蜂将不得不决定它在哪只手臂上看到图案。到图案的距离决定了图案投射到蜂眼上的大小。只要蜜蜂能发现一种模式，它就会进入正确的手臂，找到蔗糖奖励。将图案移得更远，当蜜蜂随机选择双臂时，将达到检测极限。将确定各种双色图案的检测限，这些图案由一个中心圆盘和一个周围的环或一个分成两半的圆盘组成，类似于通过蜜蜂的低分辨率眼睛看到的主要类型的花朵展示。颜色将系统地变化，以了解色调和颜色对比对背景的影响模式的可检测性。这些参数将被用来分析颜色和图案显示的完整的野花，我将记录使用紫外线敏感的多光谱成像。图案元素的形状和相对大小也会有所不同，以识别蜜蜂视觉系统中可能的过滤机制。在第二组实验中，蜜蜂将区分这些模式。只有一种模式将得到奖励。如果蜜蜂能够区分它们，它们就会对奖励模式表现出明显的偏好。这些结果将告诉我们，蜜蜂如何感知图案中的空间和颜色线索，以及哪些在某些图案中可能更重要。了解了蜜蜂如何进行模式检测和识别，我就能够解释蜜蜂如何看到和记忆复杂的彩色花朵展示。这项研究将提供新的见解，即蜜蜂的感知能力可能影响了花朵中复杂而多彩的展示的进化，这些展示旨在有效地向蜜蜂和其他具有出色色觉和学习能力的昆虫授粉者宣传自己。