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Seeing the world through the eyes of a butterfly: visual ecology of the territorial males of Pararge aegeria (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae)
- Source :
- Journal of Comparative Physiology. A, Neuroethology, Sensory, Neural, and Behavioral Physiology
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2021.
-
Abstract
- Combining studies of animal visual systems with exact imaging of their visual environment can get us a step closer to understand how animals see their “Umwelt”. Here, we have combined both methods to better understand how males of the speckled wood butterfly, Pararge aegeria, see the surroundings of their perches. These males are well known to sit and wait for a chance to mate with a passing females, in sunspot territories in European forests. We provide a detailed description of the males' body and head posture, viewing direction, visual field and spatial resolution, as well as the visual environment. Pararge aegeria has sexually dimorphic eyes, the smallest interommatidial angles of males are around 1°, those of females 1.5°. Perching males face the antisolar direction with their retinal region of the highest resolution pointing at an angle of about 45° above the horizon; thus, looking at a rather even and dark background in front of which they likely have the best chance to detect a sunlit female passing through the sunspot. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00359-021-01520-3.
- Subjects :
- Male
Visual environment
Physiology
Speckled wood
Ecological and Environmental Phenomena
Eye
Nymphalidae
Lepidoptera genitalia
Behavioral Neuroscience
Pararge aegeria
Orientation
Animals
Vision, Ocular
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Visual ecology
Sweden
Original Paper
Spatial resolution
Head posture
biology
biology.organism_classification
Mate detection
Visual field
Lepidoptera
Geography
Butterfly
Female
Animal Science and Zoology
Visual Fields
Territoriality
Butterflies
Cartography
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 14321351 and 03407594
- Volume :
- 207
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Journal of Comparative Physiology A
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....f74c7642016ba36afd8d53a12f3f1300