Let's read! We will often find out this sentence everywhere. When still being a kid, mom used to order us to always read, so did the teacher. Some books are fully read in a week and we need the obligation to support reading. What about now? Do you still love reading? Is reading only for you who have obligation? Absolutely not! We here offer you a new book enPDFd the perception of the visual world to read.

The Perception of the Visual World. By James J. Gibson. U.S.A.: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1950 (George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., London). Price 35s.

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The Dance Language and Orientation of Bees

An Anatomically Constrained Model for Path Integration in the Bee Brain

Light pollution is a driver of insect declines

In recent decades, advances in lighting technology have precipitated exponential increases in night sky brightness worldwide, raising concerns in the scientific community about the impact of artificial light at night (ALAN) on crepuscular and nocturnal biodiversity. Long-term records show that insect abundance has declined significantly over this time, with worrying implications for terrestrial ecosystems. The majority of investigations into the vulnerability of nocturnal insects to artificial light have focused on the flight-to-light behavior exhibited by select insect families. However, ALAN can affect insects in other ways as well. This review proposes five categories of ALAN impact on nocturnal insects, highlighting past research and identifying key knowledge gaps. We conclude with a summary of relevant literature on bioluminescent fireflies, which emphasizes the unique vulnerability of terrestrial light-based communication systems to artificial illumination. Comprehensive understanding of the ecological impacts of ALAN on diverse nocturnal insect taxa will enable researchers to seek out methods whereby fireflies, moths, and other essential members of the nocturnal ecosystem can coexist with humans on an increasingly urbanized planet.

https://www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ece3.4557

The impact of artificial light at night on nocturnal insects: A review and synthesis

Diurnal and nocturnal African dung beetles use celestial cues, such as the sun, the moon, and the polarization pattern, to roll dung balls along straight paths across the savanna. Although nocturnal beetles move in the same manner through the same environment as their diurnal relatives, they do so when light conditions are at least 1 million-fold dimmer. Here, we show, for the first time to our knowledge, that the celestial cue preference differs between nocturnal and diurnal beetles in a manner that reflects their contrasting visual ecologies. We also demonstrate how these cue preferences are reflected in the activity of compass neurons in the brain. At night, polarized skylight is the dominant orientation cue for nocturnal beetles. However, if we coerce them to roll during the day, they instead use a celestial body (the sun) as their primary orientation cue. Diurnal beetles, however, persist in using a celestial body for their compass, day or night. Compass neurons in the central complex of diurnal beetles are tuned only to the sun, whereas the same neurons in the nocturnal species switch exclusively to polarized light at lunar light intensities. Thus, these neurons encode the preferences for particular celestial cues and alter their weighting according to ambient light conditions. This flexible encoding of celestial cue preferences relative to the prevailing visual scenery provides a simple, yet effective, mechanism for enabling visual orientation at any light intensity.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/112/36/11395.full.pdf

Neural coding underlying the cue preference for celestial orientation

To escape competition at the dung pile, a ball-rolling dung beetle forms a piece of dung into a ball and rolls it away. To ensure an their efficient escape from the dung pile, the beetles rely on a celestial compass to move along a straight paths. Here, we analyzed the reliability of different skylight cues for this compass and found that dung beetles rely not only on the sun, but also on the skylight polarization pattern. Moreover, we show the first evidence of an insect using the celestial light intensity gradient for orientation. Using a polarizer, we manipulated skylight so that the polarization pattern appeared to turn by 90°. The beetles then changed their bearing close to the expected 90°. This behavior was abolished if the sun was visible to the beetle, suggesting that polarized light is hierarchically subordinate to the sun. If the sky was depolarized and the sun was invisible, the beetles could still move along straight paths. We therefore analyzed the use of the celestial intensity gradient for orientation. Artificially rotating the intensity pattern by 180° caused beetles to orient in the opposite direction. The intensity cue was also found to be subordinate to the sun, and could play a role in disambiguating the polarization signal, especially at low sun elevations.

Diurnal dung beetles use the intensity gradient and the polarization pattern of the sky for orientation.

Recent research has focused on the different types of compass cues available to ball-rolling beetles for orientation, but little is known about the relative precision of each of these cues and how they interact. In this study, we find that the absolute orientation error of the celestial compass of the day-active dung beetle Scarabaeus lamarcki doubles from 16° at solar elevations below 60° to an error of 29° at solar elevations above 75°. As ball-rolling dung beetles rely solely on celestial compass cues for their orientation, these insects experience a large decrease in orientation precision towards the middle of the day. We also find that in the compass system of dung beetles, the solar cues and the skylight cues are used together and share the control of orientation behaviour. Finally, we demonstrate that the relative influence of the azimuthal position of the sun for straight-line orientation decreases as the sun draws closer to the horizon. In conclusion, ball-rolling dung beetles possess a dynamic celestial compass system in which the orientation precision and the relative influence of the solar compass cues change over the course of the day.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rstb.2013.0036

The role of the sun in the celestial compass of dung beetles.

Given the great range of visual systems, tasks and habitats, there is surprisingly little experimental evidence of how visual limitations affect behavioural strategies under natural conditions. Analysing this relationship will require an experimental system that allows for the synchronous measurement of visual cues and visually guided behaviour. The first step in quantifying visual cues from an animal's perspective is to understand the filter properties of its visual system. We examined the first stage of visual processing - sampling by the ommatidial array - in the compound eye of the fiddler crab Uca vomeris. Using an in vivo pseudopupil method we determined sizes and viewing directions of ommatidia and created a complete eye map of optical and sampling resolution across the visual field. Our results reveal five distinct eye regions (ventral, dorsal, frontal, lateral and medial) which exhibit clear differences in the organisation of the local sampling array, in particular with respect to the balance of resolution and contrast sensitivity. We argue that, under global eye space constraints, these regional optimisations reflect the information content and behavioural relevance of the corresponding parts of the visual field. In demonstrating the tight link between visual sampling, visual cues and behavioural strategies, our analysis highlights how the study of natural behaviour and natural stimuli is essential to our understanding and interpretation of the evolution and ecology of animal behaviour and the design of sensory systems.

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Topography of vision and behaviour

To efficiently provide an animal with relevant information, the design of its visual system should reflect the distribution of natural signals and the animal's tasks. In many behavioural contexts, however, we know comparatively little about the moment-to-moment information-processing challenges animals face in their daily lives. In predator avoidance, for instance, we lack an accurate description of the natural signal stream and its value for risk assessment throughout the prey's defensive behaviour. We characterized the visual signals generated by real, potentially predatory events by video-recording bird approaches towards an Uca vomeris colony. Using four synchronized cameras allowed us to simultaneously monitor predator avoidance responses of crabs. We reconstructed the signals generated by dangerous and non-dangerous flying animals, identified the cues that triggered escape responses and compared them with those triggering responses to dummy predators. Fiddler crabs responded to a combination of multiple visual cues (including retinal speed, elevation and visual flicker) that reflect the visual signatures of distinct bird and insect behaviours. This allowed crabs to discriminate between dangerous and non-dangerous events. The results demonstrate the importance of measuring natural sensory signatures of biologically relevant events in order to understand biological information processing and its effects on behavioural organization.

/pdf/natural-visual-cues-eliciting-predator-avoidance-in-fiddler-3s5vsvjfoo.pdf

Jochen Smolka

Papers

Neural coding underlying the cue preference for celestial orientation

Diurnal dung beetles use the intensity gradient and the polarization pattern of the sky for orientation.

The role of the sun in the celestial compass of dung beetles.

Topography of vision and behaviour

Natural visual cues eliciting predator avoidance in fiddler crabs