Scales and facets- optical signaling and sensing in flies and butterflies
Abstract
Animal visual systems have co-evolved with their visual signals that are vital for survival; both receivers and emitters evolve towards solutions that represent the local optima in the fitness landscape where resources, energy and time are used efficiently. Diurnal butterflies are highly visual animals that possess sophisticated visual systems, colorful bodies with rich visual signals and successfully cope with complex visual environments during their agile aerial behavior. Flies have the best studied visual systems among insects that support exceptional locomotion and maneuvrability. We propose a comparative study that will address the outstanding questions related to visual signaling and the concerted sensing of colour, polarization, and motion cues, in flies and butterflies. The research questions will be- 1. What are the sampling efficiencies of the diverse retinal mosaics in the compound eyes? 2. What are the stimulus parameters related to qualities of light that are exploited for target detection and approach? 3. How are the signals detected and processed by the retina and in the downstream neural layers? 4. At which neural stage are signals integrated to enable coherent motor guidance and control signals for adequate behavior? 5. How are the diverse visual systems of flies and butterflies tuned to the specific visual tasks? We will use physiological, optical and numerical methods- to survey the butterfly and fly retinal mosaics, to investigate how are they tuned to sample the visual environment; create numerical models to evaluate the sampling efficiency of retinal mosaics; study the neural circuitry for the processing of colors and polarization; investigate how are color- and polarization-sensitivity integrated into visual motion detection; investigate the visual signals beyond color, gloss and iridescence. The study will yield an integrated insight into the evolutionary solutions for efficient visual sampling and signalling at all levels of organization, from molecules to organisms, with far-reaching implications for the design of artificial systems.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Feb 22, 2024
- Source ID
- FA86552317049
Entities
People
- Gregor Belušič
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Unilever
- United States Air Force