ReviewThe Journal of experimental biology2016
Can invertebrates see the e-vector of polarization as a separate modality of light?
Review in The Journal of experimental biology, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 56 citations in OpenAlex.
- The spectral, spatial and contrast sensitivity of human polarization pattern perception.Scientific reports · 2017Trial
- Optical properties of the jellyfish surface above the waterline: microvillar array in pleustonic hydrozoans.Zoological letters · 2025Article
- Electrophysiological recordings reveal photoreceptor coupling in the dorsal rim areas of honeybee and bumblebee eyes.Biology letters · 2025Article
- Single cones give rise to multi-cone types in the retinas of fishes.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Two Decapod Crustaceans,Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2025Article
- Polarized light detection in bumblebees varies with light intensity and is mediated by both the ocelli and compound eyes.Biology letters · 2024Article
- Passive Polarized Vision for Autonomous Vehicles: A Review.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Generating spatiotemporal patterns of linearly polarised light at high frame rates for insect vision research.The Journal of experimental biology · 2022Article
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- Article
- The wing scales of the mother-of-pearl butterfly, Protogoniomorpha parhassus, are thin film reflectors causing strong iridescence and polarization.The Journal of experimental biology · 2021Article
- Thresholds of polarization vision in octopuses.The Journal of experimental biology · 2021Article
- Article
- Spatial Contrast Sensitivity to Polarization and Luminance in Octopus.Frontiers in physiology · 2020Article
- Polarization of foliar reflectance: novel host plant cue for insect herbivores.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Parallel processing of polarization and intensity information in fiddler crab vision.Science advances · 2019Article
- From skylight input to behavioural output: A computational model of the insect polarised light compass.PLoS computational biology · 2019Article
- Celestial navigation inThe Journal of experimental biology · 2019Review
- Color polarization vision mediates the strength of an evolutionary trap.Evolutionary applications · 2019Article
- Swimming behaviour tunes fish polarization vision to double prey sighting distance.Scientific reports · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The visual world is rich in linearly polarized light stimuli, which are hidden from the human eye. But many invertebrate species make use of polarized light as a source of valuable visual information. However, exploiting light polarization does not necessarily imply that the electric (e)-vector orientation of polarized light can be perceived as a separate modality of light. In this Review, I address the question of whether invertebrates can detect specific e-vector orientations in a manner similar to that of humans perceiving spectral stimuli as specific hues. To analyze e-vector orientation, the signals of at least three polarization-sensitive sensors (analyzer channels) with different e-vector tuning axes must be compared. The object-based, imaging polarization vision systems of cephalopods and crustaceans, as well as the water-surface detectors of flying backswimmers, use just two analyzer channels. Although this excludes the perception of specific e-vector orientations, a two-channel system does provide a coarse, categoric analysis of polarized light stimuli, comparable to the limited color sense of dichromatic, 'color-blind' humans. The celestial compass of insects employs three or more analyzer channels. However, that compass is multimodal, i.e. e-vector information merges with directional information from other celestial cues, such as the solar azimuth and the spectral gradient in the sky, masking e-vector information. It seems that invertebrate organisms take no interest in the polarization details of visual stimuli, but polarization vision grants more practical benefits, such as improved object detection and visual communication for cephalopods and crustaceans, compass readings to traveling insects, or the alert 'water below!' to water-seeking bugs.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.