ArticleScientific reports2017
Does retinal configuration make the head and eyes of foveate birds move?
Article in Scientific reports, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 31 citations in OpenAlex.
- Eye Morphology, Foveal Structure and Photoreceptor Composition in Both Foveae of Common Kestrel (Biology · 2026Article
- Visual field of the ferret (Mustela putorius furo), rat (Rattus norvegicus), and tree shrew (Tupaia belangeri).Journal of vision · 2025Article
- Light tuned to the avian eye elicits early detection and escape from an approaching aircraft.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- The relative sizes of nuclei in the oculomotor complex vary by order and behaviour in birds.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2023Article
- Article
- The neuroecology of the water-to-land transition and the evolution of the vertebrate brain.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- The potential role of Arhgef33 RhoGEF in foveal development in the zebra finch retina.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- European starlings use their acute vision to check on feline predators but not on conspecifics.PloS one · 2018Article
- Blind free-living kiwi offer a unique window into the ecology and evolution of vertebrate vision.BMC biology · 2017Article
- What Drives Bird Vision? Bill Control and Predator Detection Overshadow Flight.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2017Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Animals move their heads and eyes to compensate for movements of the body and background, search, fixate, and track objects visually. Avian saccadic head/eye movements have been shown to vary considerably between species. We tested the hypothesis that the configuration of the retina (i.e., changes in retinal ganglion cell density from the retinal periphery to the center of acute vision-fovea) would account for the inter-specific variation in avian head/eye movement behavior. We characterized retinal configuration, head movement rate, and degree of eye movement of 29 bird species with a single fovea, controlling for the effects of phylogenetic relatedness. First, we found the avian fovea is off the retinal center towards the dorso-temporal region of the retina. Second, species with a more pronounced rate of change in ganglion cell density across the retina generally showed a higher degree of eye movement and higher head movement rate likely because a smaller retinal area with relatively high visual acuity leads to greater need to move the head/eye to align this area that contains the fovea with objects of interest. Our findings have implications for anti-predator behavior, as many predator-prey interaction models assume that the sensory system of prey (and hence their behavior) varies little between species.
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