Thin-fingered fiddler crabs display a natural preference for UV light cues but show no sensory bias to other hypertrophied claw coloration

Silva, Diogo Jackson Aquino; Erickson, Marilia Fernandes; Santos, Raiane; Pessoa, Daniel Marques Almeida

doi:10.1016/j.beproc.2022.104667

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…We applied von Kries transformation to normalize receptor quantum catches to the background, thus accounting for receptor adaptation ( vonkries = TRUE). The neural photoreceptor noise ( noise = ‘neural’) was set with a Weber fraction of 0.12 for crabs (Silva et al ., 2022), 0.05 for fish (Wilkins et al ., 2016), and 0.1 for birds (Olsson et al ., 2018). For the relative photoreceptor densities, we employed 1:1 for crabs, since no information about the proportion of photoreceptors is mentioned by literature, 1:2:2 for triggerfish (Champ et al ., 2014) and 1:1.9:2.7:2.7 for seagulls, based on Blue tit (Hart et al ., 2000).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biofluorescence reveals hidden patterns in chitons with implications to visual ecology

Grimaldi,

Guidi,

Jardim

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Biofluorescence is apparently widespread in the tree of life. Fluorescence has the potential to contribute to the totality of light leaving an organism’s surface and will therefore circumscribe how an individual could be detected and discriminated by their visual predators. Here, we: (i) documented the first record of biofluorescence on polyplacophorans, (ii) spectrally characterized the biofluorescence on shells of living chitons, (iii) measured the colour patch pattern variation, (iv) separated the colour of their shells into their reflectance and fluorescence components, and (v) combined these data with field measurements to calculate perceptual distance in chromatic and achromatic contrasts based on the visual system of their major visually guided predators. We found a red biofluorescence that enhances the brightness of chiton shells, along with a correlation showing that as individuals grow larger, the fluorescing surface area becomes smaller. Our visual models suggest that fluorescence decreases the achromatic contrast of chitons against their naturally fluorescent substrates for most visual predators, making them less noticeable to specific predators. Our results support the potential visual functionality of biofluorescence and open new hypotheses regarding its ecological roles to further investigations.

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