ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2020
Zebra stripes, tabanid biting flies and the aperture effect.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
What it found
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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.
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.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Fine stripe patterns disrupt honey bee landings via spatial aliasing.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2026Article
- Zebra stripes: the questions raised by the answers.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Dazzling damselfish: investigating motion dazzle as a defence strategy in humbug damselfish (PeerJ · 2024Article
- Why don't horseflies land on zebras?The Journal of experimental biology · 2023Article
- A survey on the use of rugs in Australian horses.Australian veterinary journal · 2023Article
- Evolutionary consequences of vector-borne transmission: how using vectors shapes host, vector and pathogen evolution.Parasitology · 2022Review
- Sunlit zebra stripes may confuse the thermal perception of blood vessels causing the visual unattractiveness of zebras to horseflies.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Visual communication via the design of food and beverage packaging.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2022Review
- A new argument against cooling by convective air eddies formed above sunlit zebra stripes.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Zebra stripes, tabanid biting flies and the aperture effect.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Of all hypotheses advanced for why zebras have stripes, avoidance of biting fly attack receives by far the most support, yet the mechanisms by which stripes thwart landings are not yet understood. A logical and popular hypothesis is that stripes interfere with optic flow patterns needed by flying insects to execute controlled landings. This could occur through disrupting the radial symmetry of optic flow via the aperture effect (i.e. generation of false motion cues by straight edges), or through spatio-temporal aliasing (i.e. misregistration of repeated features) of evenly spaced stripes. By recording and reconstructing tabanid fly behaviour around horses wearing differently patterned rugs, we could tease out these hypotheses using realistic target stimuli. We found that flies avoided landing on, flew faster near, and did not approach as close to striped and checked rugs compared to grey. Our observations that flies avoided checked patterns in a similar way to stripes refutes the hypothesis that stripes disrupt optic flow via the aperture effect, which critically demands parallel striped patterns. Our data narrow the menu of fly-equid visual interactions that form the basis for the extraordinary colouration of zebras.
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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.