Siegenthaler Andjin, Mondal Debapriya, Benvenuto Chiara
School of Environment and Life Sciences, University of Salford, Salford M5 4WT, UK.
Biol Methods Protoc. 2017 Mar 27;2(1):bpx003. doi: 10.1093/biomethods/bpx003. eCollection 2017 Jan.
The study of animal colouration addresses fundamental and applied aspects relevant to a wide range of fields, including behavioural ecology, environmental adaptation and visual ecology. Although a variety of methods are available to measure animal colours, only few focus on chromatophores (specialized cells containing pigments) and pigment migration. Here, we illustrate a freely available and user-friendly method to quantify pigment cover (PiC) with high precision and low effort using digital images, where the foreground (i.e. pigments in chromatophores) can be detected and separated from the background. Images of the brown shrimp, , were used to compare PiC with the traditional Chromatophore Index (CI). Results indicate that PiC outcompetes CI for pigment detection and transparency measures in terms of speed, accuracy and precision. The proposed methodology provides researchers with a useful tool to answer essential physiological, behavioural and evolutionary questions on animal colouration in a wide range of species.
对动物体色的研究涉及到与广泛领域相关的基础和应用方面，包括行为生态学、环境适应性和视觉生态学。尽管有多种方法可用于测量动物颜色，但只有少数方法关注色素细胞（含有色素的特化细胞）和色素迁移。在这里，我们展示了一种免费且用户友好的方法，使用数字图像以高精度和低工作量来量化色素覆盖度（PiC），其中前景（即色素细胞中的色素）可以从背景中检测和分离出来。使用棕色虾的图像将PiC与传统的色素细胞指数（CI）进行比较。结果表明，在速度、准确性和精度方面，PiC在色素检测和透明度测量方面优于CI。所提出的方法为研究人员提供了一个有用的工具，以回答关于广泛物种动物体色的基本生理、行为和进化问题。
