School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA.
J Comp Physiol A Neuroethol Sens Neural Behav Physiol. 2023 Nov;209(6):899-905. doi: 10.1007/s00359-023-01631-z. Epub 2023 Apr 12.
Polarization vision is used by a wide range of animals for navigating, orienting, and detecting objects or areas of interest. Shallow marine and semi-terrestrial crustaceans are particularly well known for their abilities to detect predator-like or conspecific-like objects based on their polarization properties. On land, some terrestrial invertebrates use polarization vision for detecting suitable habitats, oviposition sites or conspecifics, but examples of threat detection in the polarization domain are less well known. To test whether this also applies to crustaceans that have evolved to occupy terrestrial habitats, we determined the sensitivity of two species of land and one species of marine hermit crab to predator-like visual stimuli varying in the degree of polarization. All three species showed an ability to detect these cues based on polarization contrasts alone. One terrestrial species, Coenobita rugosus, showed an increased sensitivity to objects with a higher degree of polarization than the background. This is the inverse of most animals studied to date, suggesting that the ecological drivers for polarization vision may be different in the terrestrial environment.
偏振视觉被广泛应用于动物的导航、定位和目标或感兴趣区域的检测。浅海和半陆生甲壳类动物尤其以其根据偏振特性检测类似捕食者或同种物体的能力而闻名。在陆地上，一些陆地无脊椎动物利用偏振视觉来探测合适的栖息地、产卵地点或同种生物，但在偏振域中检测威胁的例子则鲜为人知。为了测试这是否也适用于已经进化到陆地栖息地的甲壳类动物，我们确定了两种陆生和一种海生寄居蟹对不同偏振程度的类似捕食者视觉刺激的敏感性。这三个物种都表现出仅基于偏振对比来检测这些线索的能力。一种陆生物种 Coenobita rugosus 对具有比背景更高偏振度的物体表现出更高的敏感性。这与迄今为止研究的大多数动物相反，表明偏振视觉的生态驱动因素在陆地环境中可能有所不同。
