Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons^™

The Role Of Habitat Shaping Motion Detection In Two Songbirds, Elena A. Ritschard, Luke P. Tyrrell, Esteban Fernández-Juricic

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Double cones of birds are photoreceptors associated with motion perception, and perceiving motion is highly important to detect predators. Predation risks varies between habitats and may impose selective pressures that could affect organisms’ traits. There is evidence that birds show interspecific variations in visual system properties, such as the photoreceptor densities (single and double cones) and distribution across the retina. However, little is known about the relationship between the distribution of double cones and predator scanning strategies in birds living in different habitats. The goal of this study was to compare double cones distributions of birds that live in open …