Evidence map›Paper›PMID 28866838›Full record

ArticleJournal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology2017

The path to colour discrimination is S-shaped: behaviour determines the interpretation of colour models.

Jair E Garcia, Johannes Spaethe, Adrian G Dyer

Abstract read
PubMed Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
27citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

27 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Article
  3. Article
  4. Article
  5. Flower colour contrast, 'spectral purity' and a red herring.Plant biology (Stuttgart, Germany) · 2025
    Review
  6. Article
  7. Article
  8. Article
  9. Article
  10. Comparative psychophysics of Western honey bee (Apis mellifera) and stingless bee (Tetragonula carbonaria) colour purity and intensity perception.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2022
    Article
  11. Article
  12. Article
  13. Article
  14. Article
  15. Article
  16. Article
  17. Article
  18. Article
  19. Indirect Selection on Flower Color inFrontiers in plant science · 2020
    Article
  20. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Jair E GarciaBio-Inspired Digital Sensing (BIDS) Lab, School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, Melbourne, 3000, Australia.
Johannes SpaetheDepartment of Behavioral Physiology and Sociobiology, Biozentrum, University of Wuerzburg, Wuerzburg, 97074, Germany.
Adrian G DyerBio-Inspired Digital Sensing (BIDS) Lab, School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, Melbourne, 3000, Australia. adrian.dyer@rmit.edu.au.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2632-9061

Funding

Australian Research Council DP0878968Australian Research Council DP130100015
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Most of our current understanding on colour discrimination by animal observers is built on models. These typically set strict limits on the capacity of an animal to discriminate between colour stimuli imposed by physiological characteristics of the visual system and different assumptions about the underlying mechanisms of colour processing by the brain. Such physiologically driven models were not designed to accommodate sigmoidal-type discrimination functions as those observed in recent behavioural experiments. Unfortunately, many of the fundamental assumptions on which commonly used colour models are based have been tested against empirical data for very few species and many colour vision studies solely rely on physiological measurements of these species for predicting colour discrimination processes. Here, we test the assumption of a universal principle of colour discrimination only mediated by physiological parameters using behavioural data from four closely related hymenopteran species, considering two frequently used models. Results indicate that there is not a unique function describing colour discrimination by closely related bee species, and that this process is independent of specific model assumptions; in fact, different models produce comparable results for specific test species if calibrated against behavioural data.

Indexed as

Models, NeurologicalAnimalsBehavior, AnimalColor PerceptionHymenopteraBeeHexagonReceptor noiseSigmoidalVision

Identifiers

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.