Complex gaze stabilization in mantis shrimp

Abstract

Almost all animals, regardless of the anatomy of the eyes, require some level of gaze stabilization in order to see the world clearly and without blur. For the mantis shrimp, achieving gaze stabilization is unusually challenging as their eyes have an unprecedented scope for movement in all three rotational degrees of freedom: yaw, pitch and torsion. We demonstrate that the species Odontodactylus scyllarus performs stereotypical gaze stabilization in the yaw degree of rotational freedom, which is accompanied by simultaneous changes in the pitch and torsion rotation of the eye. Surprisingly, yaw gaze stabilization performance is unaffected by both the torsional pose and the rate of torsional rotation of the eye. Further to this, we show, for the first time, a lack of a torsional gaze stabilization response in the stomatopod visual system. In the light of these findings, we suggest that the neural wide-field motion detection network in the stomatopod visual system may follow a radially symmetric organization to compensate for the potentially disorientating effects of torsional eye movements, a system likely to be unique to stomatopods.

Quantitative Colour Pattern Analysis (QCPA): A comprehensive framework for the analysis of colour patterns in nature

“…Nilsson, Warrant, & Johnsen, ). Furthermore, many animal eyes do not have uniform retinas which, in combination with diversity in eye movements and eye shapes, leads to a little investigated diversity of visual perception in addition to the already discussed perceptual diversity in animal visual systems (Daly, How, Partridge, & Roberts, ; Hughes, ; Land, ; Land & Nilsson, ; Sibeaux et al, ; Willis & Anderson, ). QCPA could also be adapted to investigate moving patterns (e.g.…”

Impact of walking speed and motion adaptation on optokinetic nystagmus-like head movements in the blowfly Calliphora

“…The OKN complements a range of gaze-stabilization strategies which together have numerous benefits for visual processing, including the reduction of motion blur, lowering retinal slip speed, and facilitating the tracking of stationary objects within a moving scene 1–3 . It is displayed by many species, including both vertebrates (rabbit 4 , pigeon 5 , cat 6 , salamander 7 , flying snake 8 ) and invertebrates (mantis shrimp 9 , crab 10 , locust 11 ), and has proved a fruitful tool for analyzing the neural circuits of visual motion processing (mice 12,13 , crab 10 , zebrafish 14 , macaque, rabbit, cat, dog, pigeon 15 ).…”

Investigating Defensive Colouration in Nudibranch Molluscs using a Novel Analytical Framework for the Study of Animal Colour Patterns​​​​​​​

“…Nilsson, Warrant, & Johnsen, 2014). Furthermore, many animal eyes do not have uniform retinas which, in combination with diversity in eye movements and eye shapes, leads to a little investigated diversity of visual perception in addition to the already discussed perceptual diversity in animal visual systems (Wiener, 1957;Land, 1999;Willis & Anderson, 2002;Daly, How, Partridge, & Roberts, 2018;Hughes, 2018;Sibeaux, Keser, Cole, Kranz, & Endler, 2019). QCPA could also be adapted to investigate moving patterns (e.g.…”