ReviewBiology letters2017
Unravelling the illusion of flicker fusion.
Review in Biology letters, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Improving children's alertness and neuromuscular response by using a blue-enriched white light in the kindergarten playroom.Scientific reports · 2025Trial
- Motion enhances camouflage: Retinal evidence for flicker fusion camouflage in jumping spiders.iScience · 2026Article
- Dynamic colour change predicts movement behaviour in a diadromous fish.Journal of fish biology · 2026Article
- A Simulated Visual Field Defect Impairs Temporal Processing: An Effect Not Modulated by Emotional Faces.Vision (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Highly Improved Captures of the Diamondback Moth,Insects · 2025Article
- Role of body size and shape in animal camouflage.Ecology and evolution · 2024Review
- Rat superior colliculus encodes the transition between static and dynamic vision modes.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Background matching can reduce responsiveness of jumping spiders to stimuli in motion.The Journal of experimental biology · 2024Article
- Hierarchical consciousness: the Nested Observer Windows model.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2024Article
- Quantitative Chemical Analysis of Defensive Secretion of Megacrania tsudai (Phasmatidae) and Effect of Actinidine on its Potential Predators.Journal of chemical ecology · 2023Article
- Visual antipredator effects of web flexing in an orb web spider, with special reference to web decorations.Die Naturwissenschaften · 2023Article
- Article
- Correlated evolution between colour conspicuousness and drum speed in woodpeckers.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Critical Flicker Fusion Frequency: A Narrative Review.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2021Review
- Motion: enhancing signals and concealing cues.Biology open · 2021Article
- In the corner of the eye: camouflaging motion in the peripheral visual field.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- The key role of behaviour in animal camouflage.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2019Article
- A Mechanism of Synaptic Clock Underlying Subjective Time Perception.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
For over 150 years, researchers have investigated the anti-predator function of animal patterns. However, this work has mainly focused on when prey remain still, and has only recently started to incorporate motion into the study of defensive coloration. As motion breaks camouflage, a new challenge is to understand how prey avoid predators while moving around their environment, and if a moving prey can ever be camouflaged. We propose that there is a solution to this, in that a 'flicker fusion effect' can change the appearance of the prey in the eyes of their predators to reduce the chances of initial detection. This effect occurs when a high contrast pattern blurs at speed, changing the appearance of the prey, which may help them better match their background. Despite being widely discussed in the literature, the flicker fusion effect is poorly described, there is no clear theoretical framework for testing how it might reduce predation, and the terminology describing it is, at best, rather confusing. Our review addresses these three key issues to enable researchers to formulate precise predictions about when the flicker fusion effect occurs, and to test how it can reduce predation.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.