Neuhofer Daniela, Machan Rudi, Schmid Axel
Department of Neurobiology and Cognition Research, University Vienna, Althanstrasse 14, 1090 Wien, Austria.
J Exp Biol. 2009 Sep 1;212(17):2819-23. doi: 10.1242/jeb.027136.
Like most other spiders Cupiennius salei (Keyserling 1877) has two different eye types, one pair of principal eyes and three pairs of secondary eyes. The principal eyes have two eye muscles each, which allow movement of the retina and are mainly used for the discrimination of stationary objects. The secondary eyes without such eye muscles are supposed to detect moving objects. Masking experiments were used to analyse the role of these two eye types in motion detection. In a white arena the animals were stimulated with short sequences of moving black bars. The principal eyes move involuntarily when objects are moving within the visual field of an ipsilateral secondary eye. The eye muscle activity of the principal eyes was recorded using single channel telemetry, and activity changes were taken as an indicator for the perception of motion. Masking the principal eyes with black paint and presenting a moving visual stimulus did not modify the induced muscle activity, whereas masking the secondary eyes eliminated the increase in eye muscle activity. This suggests that the secondary eyes are responsible for movement detection. We conclude that the animals are able to detect moving targets visually only with the secondary eyes. The principal eyes, by contrast, do not seem to be involved in the detection of moving targets.
和大多数其他蜘蛛一样，巴西游走蛛（凯泽林，1877年）有两种不同类型的眼睛，一对主眼和三对副眼。主眼各有两条眼肌，可使视网膜移动，主要用于辨别静止物体。没有这种眼肌的副眼则用于探测移动的物体。我们通过掩蔽实验来分析这两种眼睛在运动检测中的作用。在白色实验场内，用短序列移动的黑色条纹刺激这些蜘蛛。当物体在同侧副眼的视野内移动时，主眼会不由自主地移动。使用单通道遥测技术记录主眼的眼肌活动，并将活动变化作为运动感知的指标。用黑色颜料遮住主眼并呈现移动的视觉刺激，并不会改变诱发的肌肉活动，而遮住副眼则会消除眼肌活动的增加。这表明副眼负责运动检测。我们得出结论，这些蜘蛛仅靠副眼就能视觉探测移动目标。相比之下，主眼似乎并不参与移动目标的检测。
