Effect of background on colour discrimination by free-flying bumblebees

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Effect of background on colour discrimination by free-flying bumblebees Miguel A. Rodriguez-Girones1* and Elisa Pizarro1 1 Spanish Research Council, Spain Colour perception and discrimination rely on the signals emitted by photoreceptors. According to existing models, these signals depend on the spectral properties of the light impinging on the photoreceptors, and on the spectral properties of background radiation. Most models incorporate the effect of background radiation through the von Kries transformation, according to which it is possible to choose colour pairs that should be indistinguishable in one background and easily discriminated in a different one. To check whether bumblebee colour discrimination satisfies the predictions of von Kries adaptation, we selected two colour pairs and three backgrounds in such a way that the discriminability of one colour pair should be roughly independent of the background (predicted colour distance ranging from 0.012 to 0.035 hexagon units) while the discriminability of the other pair should be virtually impossible in one background (0.006 hexagon units), trivial in another background (0.12 hexagon units) and difficult in the third background (0.02 hexagon units). Individually marked bumblebees were trained to forage in a flight arena with artificial flowers. Each bee was trained, in a single background, to associate flowers of one colour with nectar and flowers of the other colour with quinine solution. Contrary to expectation, the ability of bees to discriminate between the two flower colours did not increase with the perceptual distance predicted by the colour hexagon model: the proportion of correct responses was greatest (79%) when the predicted colour distance was 0.02 hexagon units, while bees could not discriminate (51% correct responses) between the two colours for which the predicted colour distance was 0.12 hexagon units (see figure). The disagreement between predictions and experimental results should not be taken as a test of the hexagon model, as the fit was no better for alternative models (colour opponent coding and receptor noise models). Our results therefore suggest that the von Kries transformation does not provide a suitable description of chromatic adaptation in bumblebees. Figure 1 Keywords: Colour discrimination, colouor constancy, bumblebee model, von Kries adaptation, Speed-accuracy tradeoff Conference: International Conference on Invertebrate Vision, Fjälkinge, Sweden, 1 Aug - 8 Aug, 2013. Presentation Type: Poster presentation preferred Topic: Colour and polarisation vision Citation: Rodriguez-Girones MA and Pizarro E (2019). Effect of background on colour discrimination by free-flying bumblebees. Front. Physiol. Conference Abstract: International Conference on Invertebrate Vision. doi: 10.3389/conf.fphys.2013.25.00121 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 07 May 2013; Published Online: 09 Dec 2019. * Correspondence: Dr. Miguel A Rodriguez-Girones, Spanish Research Council, Almeria, Spain, rgirones@eeza.csic.es Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Miguel A Rodriguez-Girones Elisa Pizarro Google Miguel A Rodriguez-Girones Elisa Pizarro Google Scholar Miguel A Rodriguez-Girones Elisa Pizarro PubMed Miguel A Rodriguez-Girones Elisa Pizarro Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.