Ultra-Rapid Vision in Birds

Summary

AbstractFlying animals need to accurately detect, identify and track fast-moving objects and these behavioral requirements are likely to strongly select for abilities to resolve visual detail in time. However, evidence of highly elevated temporal acuity relative to non-flying animals has so far been confined to insects while it has been missing in birds. With behavioral experiments on three wild passerine species, blue tits, collared and pied flycatchers, we demonstrate temporal acuities of vision far exceeding predictions based on the sizes and metabolic rates of these birds. This implies a history of strong natural selection on temporal resolution. These birds can resolve alternating light-dark cycles at up to 145 Hz (average: 129, 127 and 137, respectively), which is ca. 50 Hz over the highest frequency shown in any other vertebrate. We argue that rapid vision should confer a selective advantage in many bird species that are ecologically similar to the three species examined in our study. Thus, rapid vision may be a more typical avian trait than the famously sharp vision found in birds of prey. Citation: Boström JE, Dimitrova M, Canton C, Håstad O, Qvarnström A, Ödeen A (2016) Ultra-Rapid Vision in Birds. PLoS ONE 11(3): e0151099. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0151099Editor: Stephan C.F. Neuhauss, University Zürich, SWITZERLANDReceived: February 15, 2016; Accepted: February 23, 2016; Published: March 18, 2016Copyright: Boström et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Data Availability: Data will be made available from Dryad Digital Repository upon acceptance.Funding: Financial support was provided by Carl Trygger’s Foundation (grant numbers CTS 09: 425 and CTS10: 432, to AÖ; URL: http://www.carltryggersstiftelse.se), The Swedish Research Council Formas (gran...