Anoline lizards communicate with visual displays in which they open and close a colourful throat fan called the dewlap. We used a visual fixation reflex as an assay to test the effects of stimulus versus background chromatic and brightness contrast on the probability of detecting a moving coloured (i.e. dewlap-like) stimulus in Anolis cristatellus. The probability of stimulus detection depended on two additive visual-system channels, one responding to brightness contrast and one responding to chromatic contrast, independent of brightness. The brightness channel was influenced only by wavelengths longer than 450nm and probably received input only from middle- and/or long-wavelength photoreceptors. The chromatic contrast channel appeared to receive input from three, or possibly four, different classes of cone in the anoline retina, including one with peak sensitivity in the ultraviolet. We developed a multi-linear regression equation that described most of the results of this study to a reasonable degree of accuracy. In the future, this equation could be used to predict the relative visibility of different-coloured stimuli in different habitat light conditions, which should be very useful for testing hypotheses that attempt to relate habitat light conditions and visual-system response to the evolution of signal design.
In the field: an interview with Harald Wolf
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In our new Conversation, Harald Wolf talks about his fieldwork experiences working with desert ants in Tunisia to understand their navigation.
Propose a new Workshop
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Our Workshops bring together leading experts and early-career researchers from a range of scientific backgrounds. Applications are now open to propose Workshops for 2024, one of which will be held in a Global South country.
Julian Dow steps down and John Terblanche joins the JEB team
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After 15 years with the journal, Julian Dow from University of Glasgow, UK, is stepping down as a Monitoring Editor. We wish Julian all the best for the future and welcome John Terblanche, Stellenbosch University, South Africa, who is joining the team. Julian talks about his long association with The Company of Biologists and the journal and John tells us about his life and career in this News article.
The capture of crude oil droplets by filter feeders at high and low Reynolds numbers
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Researchers from the University of Montreal, Canada, reveal how tiny filter feeding barnacles and Daphnia entrap and consume minute droplets of crude oil, introducing the pollutant at the bottom of the food chain.
Patterns and processes in amphibious fish
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In their Review, Keegan Lutek, Cassandra Donatelli and Emily Standen discuss the biomechanics and neural control of terrestrial locomotion in amphibious fish. They explore how locomotor mode depends on body shape, physical constraints and phylogeny.
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