The contrast sensitivity function of the praying mantis Sphodromantis lineola

The detection of visual motion and its direction is a fundamental task faced by several visual systems. The motion detection system of insects has been widely studied with the majority of studies focussing on flies and bees. Here we characterize the contrast sensitivity of motion detection in the pr...

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Main Authors:	Nityananda, Vivek, Tarawneh, Ghaith, Jones, Lisa, Busby, Natalie, Herbert, William, Davies, Robert, Read, Jenny C. A.
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2015
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4510923/

id	pubmed-4510923
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-45109232015-07-23 The contrast sensitivity function of the praying mantis Sphodromantis lineola Nityananda, Vivek Tarawneh, Ghaith Jones, Lisa Busby, Natalie Herbert, William Davies, Robert Read, Jenny C. A. Original Paper The detection of visual motion and its direction is a fundamental task faced by several visual systems. The motion detection system of insects has been widely studied with the majority of studies focussing on flies and bees. Here we characterize the contrast sensitivity of motion detection in the praying mantis Sphodromantis lineola, an ambush predator that stays stationary for long periods of time while preying on fast-moving prey. In this, its visual behaviour differs from previously studied insects and we might therefore expect its motion detection system to differ from theirs. To investigate the sensitivity of the mantis we analyzed its optomotor response in response to drifting gratings with different contrasts and spatio-temporal frequencies. We find that the contrast sensitivity of the mantis depends on the spatial and temporal frequencies present in the stimulus and is separably tuned to spatial and temporal frequency rather than specifically to object velocity. Our results also suggest that mantises are sensitive to a broad range of velocities, in which they differ from bees and are more similar to hoverflies. We discuss our results in relation to the contrast sensitivities of other insects and the visual ecology of the mantis. Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2015-04-18 2015 /pmc/articles/PMC4510923/ /pubmed/25894490 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00359-015-1008-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2015 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Nityananda, Vivek Tarawneh, Ghaith Jones, Lisa Busby, Natalie Herbert, William Davies, Robert Read, Jenny C. A.
spellingShingle	Nityananda, Vivek Tarawneh, Ghaith Jones, Lisa Busby, Natalie Herbert, William Davies, Robert Read, Jenny C. A. The contrast sensitivity function of the praying mantis Sphodromantis lineola
author_facet	Nityananda, Vivek Tarawneh, Ghaith Jones, Lisa Busby, Natalie Herbert, William Davies, Robert Read, Jenny C. A.
author_sort	Nityananda, Vivek
title	The contrast sensitivity function of the praying mantis Sphodromantis lineola
title_short	The contrast sensitivity function of the praying mantis Sphodromantis lineola
title_full	The contrast sensitivity function of the praying mantis Sphodromantis lineola
title_fullStr	The contrast sensitivity function of the praying mantis Sphodromantis lineola
title_full_unstemmed	The contrast sensitivity function of the praying mantis Sphodromantis lineola
title_sort	contrast sensitivity function of the praying mantis sphodromantis lineola
description	The detection of visual motion and its direction is a fundamental task faced by several visual systems. The motion detection system of insects has been widely studied with the majority of studies focussing on flies and bees. Here we characterize the contrast sensitivity of motion detection in the praying mantis Sphodromantis lineola, an ambush predator that stays stationary for long periods of time while preying on fast-moving prey. In this, its visual behaviour differs from previously studied insects and we might therefore expect its motion detection system to differ from theirs. To investigate the sensitivity of the mantis we analyzed its optomotor response in response to drifting gratings with different contrasts and spatio-temporal frequencies. We find that the contrast sensitivity of the mantis depends on the spatial and temporal frequencies present in the stimulus and is separably tuned to spatial and temporal frequency rather than specifically to object velocity. Our results also suggest that mantises are sensitive to a broad range of velocities, in which they differ from bees and are more similar to hoverflies. We discuss our results in relation to the contrast sensitivities of other insects and the visual ecology of the mantis.
publisher	Springer Berlin Heidelberg
publishDate	2015
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4510923/
_version_	1613250652183461888

The contrast sensitivity function of the praying mantis Sphodromantis lineola

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