Comparative analysis of sensor noise for target detection in dragonfly eyes

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Dragonflies hunt tiny prey in the low-light conditions of late dusk, a signal-to-noise problem that challenges any engineered system. Using a comparative approach across dragonfly species, we aim to use novel optical and physiological measures to determine how sensors with noise underlie target-detection, in varying scene brightness. The project outcomes will be a comparative characterisation of signal-to-noise measures of dragonfly eye optics (including eye size) and early sensory neurons. We will match detection thresholds with downstream target-detecting neurons and dragonfly behaviour. This will provide insight into signal detection, which is a ubiquitous problem across information processing, computer vision and autonomous systems.