ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020
Wild hummingbirds discriminate nonspectral colors.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers.
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30 citing papers in PubMed, 72 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Iridescent structural coloration in a crested Cretaceous enantiornithine bird from the Jehol Biota.eLife · 2025Article
- Trichromacy and ultraviolet vision in a nocturnal marsupial.Scientific reports · 2025Article
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- Geometric design of antireflective leafhopper brochosomes.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
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- Genetically Encoded Lizard Color Divergence for Camouflage and Thermoregulation.Molecular biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Gamma-band-based dynamic functional connectivity in pigeon entopallium during sample presentation in a delayed color matching task.Cognitive neurodynamics · 2024Article
- Phylogenetical Position versus Pollination Syndromes: Floral Trichomes of Central American and MexicanInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
- Hummingbird foraging preferences during extreme heat events.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Interspecific hybridization explains rapid gorget colour divergence inRoyal Society open science · 2023Article
- Transcriptome and metabolome analysis reveals the effect of flavonoids on flower color variation inFrontiers in plant science · 2023Article
- Exploiting colour space geometry for visual stimulus design across animals.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Insect opsins and evo-devo: what have we learned in 25 years?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Hummingbird plumage color diversity exceeds the known gamut of all other birds.Communications biology · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Many animals have the potential to discriminate nonspectral colors. For humans, purple is the clearest example of a nonspectral color. It is perceived when two color cone types in the retina (blue and red) with nonadjacent spectral sensitivity curves are predominantly stimulated. Purple is considered nonspectral because no monochromatic light (such as from a rainbow) can evoke this simultaneous stimulation. Except in primates and bees, few behavioral experiments have directly examined nonspectral color discrimination, and little is known about nonspectral color perception in animals with more than three types of color photoreceptors. Birds have four color cone types (compared to three in humans) and might perceive additional nonspectral colors such as UV+red and UV+green. Can birds discriminate nonspectral colors, and are these colors behaviorally and ecologically relevant? Here, using comprehensive behavioral experiments, we show that wild hummingbirds can discriminate a variety of nonspectral colors. We also show that hummingbirds, relative to humans, likely perceive a greater proportion of natural colors as nonspectral. Our analysis of plumage and plant spectra reveals many colors that would be perceived as nonspectral by birds but not by humans: Birds' extra cone type allows them not just to see UV light but also to discriminate additional nonspectral colors. Our results support the idea that birds can distinguish colors throughout tetrachromatic color space and indicate that nonspectral color perception is vital for signaling and foraging. Since tetrachromacy appears to have evolved early in vertebrates, this capacity for rich nonspectral color perception is likely widespread.
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