Conspicuousness and Concealment: The Visual Ecology of Signaling and Camouflage

项目摘要：显眼和隐藏：发出信号和伪装的视觉生态动物执行的所有视觉任务都发生在自然场景中。因此，动物的视觉系统被调整为对它们在自然环境中观看的场景进行高效(通常是近乎最佳的)分析。然而，动物很少关心一般的场景特性。相反，大多数视觉感兴趣的对象是其他动物或植物食物，如水果或鲜花。有时视觉对象被装饰成一个强烈的信号。其他时候，它可能会使用与其自然背景相混淆的图案来隐藏自己--它是伪装的。信号系统和伪装系统必须与其他动物的视觉和背景的特性相抗衡。此外，背景和有机体都不是恒定的外观，因为照射在它们身上的光照模式不断变化。这些变化的环境强烈地影响了场景和信号的视觉外观。这个项目考虑了光源、场景、信号和动物视觉之间的相互关系。研究将集中在对视觉、颜色和行为背景提供良好初步了解的海洋系统：珊瑚鱼、螳螂虾和墨鱼。主要目标是了解动物的颜色(即光谱反射率)和模式如何适应增强的显着性或隐蔽性，以及动物的视觉系统如何专门检测信号和打破伪装。这种方法的强大之处在于，它比较了各种动物，所有这些动物都必须在浅海、清澈的海水中形成和识别生物信号。这项研究将是一项开创性的努力，以了解视觉、信号和伪装系统如何在极其五颜六色(或伪装得很好)的海洋物种的自然光源和背景的特定背景下运行。这项研究将对感觉生物学、视觉生态学和动物行为学领域做出重大贡献。同样，从事遥感、机器视觉和人工目标检测系统(包括伪装目标)的工程师和科学家也将对此特别感兴趣。这将有助于研究生的培养，并提高在P.I.S实验室工作的本科生的研究经验，包括女性和少数民族学生。(他们已经参与了这个实验室的类似研究)。最后--也是非常重要的--这些项目承诺激发公众和所有对动物视觉、颜色和密码感兴趣的人的科学兴趣。

Project Summary: Conspicuousness and Concealment: The Visual Ecology ofSignaling and CamouflageAll visual tasks that animals perform take place in natural scenes.Consequently, the visual systems of animals are adapted for efficient(often nearly optimal) analysis of the scenes they view in naturalcircumstances. Animals are rarely concerned with general sceneproperties, however. Rather, most objects of visual interest are otheranimals or plant food items such as fruits or flowers. Sometimes thevisual object is decorated to become a strong signal. Other times, itmay conceal itself using patterns that are confused with its naturalbackground - it is camouflaged. Systems of signaling and camouflagemust contend with both vision of other animals and properties of thebackground. Furthermore, neither the background nor the organism has aconstant appearance because of continuous variations in the patterns ofillumination falling upon them. These changing conditions stronglyinfluence the visual appearances of scenes and signals.This project considers the interrelationships among illuminants, scenes,signals, and animal vision. Research will concentrate on marine systemsthat offer excellent preliminary understanding of vision, color, andbehavioral context: coral reef fishes, mantis shrimps, and cuttlefish.The primary goals are to learn how colors (i.e. spectral reflectances)and patterns of animals are adapted for enhanced conspicuousness orconcealment, and how visual systems of animals are specialized to detectsignals and to break camouflage. The power of this approach is that itcompares a diverse selection of animals, all of which must form andrecognize biological signals in shallow, clear marine waters. Theresearch will be a pioneering effort to learn how systems of vision,signaling, and camouflage operate in extremely colorful (or wellcamouflaged) marine species in the specific contexts of their naturalilluminants and backgrounds. The proposed research will contributesignificantly to the fields of sensory biology, visual ecology, andanimal behavior. It will similarly be of special interest to engineersand scientists working in remote sensing, machine vision, and artificialsystems of object detection (including camouflaged objects). It willcontribute to the training of graduate students and enhance the researchexperiences of undergraduates working in the P.I.s laboratory, includingwomen and minority students. (who are already involved with similarresearch in this laboratory). Last - and far from least - the projectholds promise for stimulating scientific interest in the general publicand all those interested in animal vision, color, and crypsis.