Venables Siân Vincent, Drerup Christian, Powell Samuel B, Marshall N Justin, Herbert-Read James E, How Martin J
School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, UK.
Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, UK.
Sci Adv. 2022 Sep 9;8(36):eabq2770. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abq2770.
In shallow water, downwelling light is refracted from surface waves onto the substrate creating bands of light that fluctuate in both time and space, known as caustics. This dynamic illumination can be a visual hindrance for animals in shallow underwater environments. Animals in such habitats may have evolved to use polarization vision for discriminating objects while ignoring the variations in illumination caused by caustics. To explore this possibility, crabs () and cuttlefish (), both of which have polarization vision, were presented with moving stimuli overlaid with caustics. Dynamic caustics inhibited the detection of an intensity-based stimulus but not when these stimuli were polarized. This study is the first to demonstrate that polarization vision reduces the negative impacts that dynamic illumination can have on visual perception.
在浅水中，下行光从表面波折射到基质上，形成在时间和空间上都波动的光带，即焦散。这种动态照明对于浅水环境中的动物来说可能是一种视觉障碍。在这样的栖息地中的动物可能已经进化出利用偏振视觉来辨别物体，同时忽略焦散引起的光照变化。为了探究这种可能性，研究人员让具有偏振视觉的螃蟹（）和乌贼（）面对叠加有焦散的移动刺激物。动态焦散抑制了基于强度的刺激物的检测，但当这些刺激物是偏振的时候则不会。这项研究首次证明偏振视觉减少了动态照明对视觉感知可能产生的负面影响。
