NICOP - Bio-inspiration from a 400 million-year-old arms-race: Stomatopods v Cephalopods and the fight for visual system dominance
Abstract
The stomatopod crustaceans (mantis shrimps) and the cephalopods (octopus, squid, cuttlefish andnautilus) are among the most successful predators on earth for their size and habitat. They bothemerged during a period of rapid visual system evolution shortly after the Cambrian explosion,long before any vertebrate. Since then they have spread throughout all ocean habitats, locked incompetition and sometimes combat. The resulting forces have forged visual systems exhibitingunique solutions that are very divergent from any other animal. This proposal aims to unlock thevisual (sensor design), neural (circuits and information flow) and behavioural (decisions andactions) innovations these two groups present. With this project, we hope to reveal new aspects ofsensory neuroscience, but now extend further towards testing hypotheses, largely surrounding thefunction of polarisation vision underwater, but without losing sight of the other forms ofinformation that light provides. Through three blocks of work that will take comparative-approachinspiration from both stomatopods and cephalopods we aim to:1) Continue our description of the unique neural architecture that stomatopods use to processtheir 20-channel visual information code, and expand our discovery of the 3-channelcephalopod visual system that has discarded colour in favour of polarization information(Fig. 1 ??? main proposal).2) Discover the advantages, such as sparse, energy-efficient or rapid codes, in informationtransfer from retina to brain, as exemplified in the apparently complex stomatopod andapparently simple cephalopod visual systems.3) Investigate the use of polarization underwater as a navigational and positional cue, in biologyat the whole animal behavioural level and through simple proof of concept underwaterrobots that recapitulate animal systems.Outcomes (resulting in papers and conference presentations and a robot)a) To make basic descriptions and discoveries surrounding the visual sense and central (brain)processing of visual information in two marine invertebrate groups.b) To investigate the functions of polarised light underwater, including the potential fornavigation and global positioning as well as object detection and object contrast in degradedvisual environments (scatter/turbidity).c) By describing and investigating neural function in both groups, understand how theirinformation processing ??? both of polarised light and other light ??? is different (sparse-coding?). Inparticular how do stomatopods avoid the ???log-jam??? effect with 20 channels of informationfeeding a small brain.d) Use what we learn about the sensors, information processing and resulting actions in marineanimals to inform the design of simple, proof of concept robots that are expected to navigate andposition find without surfacing using the in-water intrinsic polarisation alone.Impact on DoDThis work has potential impact on DoD areas of interest including Sensors and sensing,Navigation systems, Vision in degraded environments, New innovative uses of theelectromagnetic spectrum and Information flow and communication optimisation. It also has thepotential to contribute to the new program of work recently described by DARPA on usingmarine animals for monitoring strategic waters (PALS ??? www.darpa.mil/news-events/2018-02-02).What this proposal asks for is mainly funding for two motivated and capable Post-Docs for twoyears to drive the work forward. One will work on the stomatopod side of the project, focusedon understanding neural design, information flow and specifically polarization vision fornavigation and/or object recognition. The other is focused on describing the cephalopod brain,including its polarization capability also. Fortunately, both currently work in the lab. But needfunding to continue beyond 2018.The overall scope described in this project is beyond the funding asked for but capacity builtand running in the lab make the aims achievable. All research directions capitalize upo
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Sep 04, 2018
- Source ID
- N629091812134
Entities
People
- Justin Marshall
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of Queensland