ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
Visual guidance of forward flight in hummingbirds reveals control based on image features instead of pattern velocity.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Organization of Central Retinal Projections in Anna's Hummingbirds (Calypte anna) and Zebra Finches (Taeniopygia castanotis).The Journal of comparative neurology · 2025Article
- Detecting artificially impaired balance in human locomotion: metrics, perturbation effects and detection thresholds.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Hummingbirds use compensatory eye movements to stabilize both rotational and translational visual motion.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Brightness cues affect gap negotiation behaviours in zebra finches flying between perches.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Hummingbirds use distinct control strategies for forward and hovering flight.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Article
- Through Hawks' Eyes: Synthetically Reconstructing the Visual Field of a Bird in Flight.International journal of computer vision · 2023Article
- Birds both avoid and control collisions by harnessing visually guided force vectoring.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2022Article
- Article
- Look where you go: Characterizing eye movements toward optic flow.Journal of vision · 2021Article
- How lovebirds maneuver through lateral gusts with minimal visual information.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- Rapid assessment of natural visual motion integration across primate species.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
- Visual-Cerebellar Pathways and Their Roles in the Control of Avian Flight.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2018Review
- Comparison of Visually Guided Flight in Insects and Birds.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2018Review
- The Orientation of Visual Space from the Perspective of Hummingbirds.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2018Article
- Comparative analysis of vestibular ecomorphology in birds.Journal of anatomy · 2017Article
- Rules to fly by: pigeons navigating horizontal obstacles limit steering by selecting gaps most aligned to their flight direction.Interface focus · 2017Article
- Visual Sensory Signals Dominate Tactile Cues during Docked Feeding in Hummingbirds.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2017Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Information about self-motion and obstacles in the environment is encoded by optic flow, the movement of images on the eye. Decades of research have revealed that flying insects control speed, altitude, and trajectory by a simple strategy of maintaining or balancing the translational velocity of images on the eyes, known as pattern velocity. It has been proposed that birds may use a similar algorithm but this hypothesis has not been tested directly. We examined the influence of pattern velocity on avian flight by manipulating the motion of patterns on the walls of a tunnel traversed by Anna's hummingbirds. Contrary to prediction, we found that lateral course control is not based on regulating nasal-to-temporal pattern velocity. Instead, birds closely monitored feature height in the vertical axis, and steered away from taller features even in the absence of nasal-to-temporal pattern velocity cues. For vertical course control, we observed that birds adjusted their flight altitude in response to upward motion of the horizontal plane, which simulates vertical descent. Collectively, our results suggest that birds avoid collisions using visual cues in the vertical axis. Specifically, we propose that birds monitor the vertical extent of features in the lateral visual field to assess distances to the side, and vertical pattern velocity to avoid collisions with the ground. These distinct strategies may derive from greater need to avoid collisions in birds, compared with small insects.
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