Variability of a dynamic visual signal: the fiddler crab claw-waving display

Fiddler crabs use elaborate, species-specific claw-waving displays to communicate with rivals and mates. However, detailed comparative studies of fiddler crab signal structure and structural variations are lacking. This paper provides an analysis of the claw-waving displays of seven Australian species of fiddler crab, Uca mjoebergi, U. perplexa, U. polita, U. seismella, U. signata, U. elegans and U. vomeris. We used digital video to record and analyse the fine-scale spatiotemporal properties of these movement-based visual signals. We found that the structure and timing of the displays is species-specific, exhibiting inter-specific differences that follow phylogenetic relationships. The displays showed intra-specific variation according to individual identity, geographic location and fine-scale behavioural context. The observed differences and variations are discussed in the light of the evolutionary forces that may shape their design.     

Discriminating signal from noise: recognition of a movement-based animal display by artificial neural networks

In this study, we investigated the feasibility of applying neural networks to understanding movement-based visual signals. Networks based on three different models were constructed, varying in their input format and network architecture: a Static Input model, a Dynamic Input model and a Feedback model. The task for all networks was to distinguish a lizard (Amphibolurus muricatus) tail-flick from background plant movement. Networks based on all models were able to distinguish the two types of visual motion, and generalised successfully to unseen exemplars. We used curves defined by the receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) to select a single network from each model to be used in regression analyses of network response and several motion variables. Collectively, the models predicted that tail-flick efficacy would be enhanced by faster speeds, greater acceleration and longer durations.     

Activation of orientation selectivity mechanisms in neurons of the cat visual cortex by a moving visual "noise" field

A relationship was established between the response of neurons of the cat visual cortex and the direction of movement in the visual "noise" field and of a slit of light. It was shown that a shift in the preferred direction of movement in the "noise" field in relation to that of the slit was found in orientationally selective neurons only. It was concluded that the "noise" field, which is a stimulus lacking an orientation component, does activate mechanisms of neuronal orientation selectively.V. Kapsukas State University, Vilnius. Translated from Neirofiziologiya, Vol. 17, No. 5, pp. 596–601, September–October, 1985.     

Frequency dependence of the action-perception cycle for postural control in a moving visual environment: relative phase dynamics

When standing human subjects are exposed to a moving visual environment, the induced postural sway displays varying degrees of coherence with the visual information. In our experiment we varied the frequency of an oscillatory visual display and analysed the temporal relationship between visual motion and sway. We found that subjects maintain sizeable sway amplitudes even as temporal coherence with the display is lost. Postural sway tended to phase lead (for frequencies below 0.2 Hz) or phase lag (above 0.3 Hz). However, we also observed at a fixed frequency, highly variable phase relationships in which a preferred range of phase lags is prevalent, but phase jumps occur that return the system into the preferred range after phase has begun drifting out of the preferred regime. By comparing the results quantitatively with a dynamical model (the sine-circle map), we show that this effect can be understood as a form of relative coordination and arises through an instability of the dynamics of the action-perception cycle. Because such instabilities cannot arise in passively driven systems, we conclude that postural sway in this situation is actively generated as rhythmic movement which is coupled dynamically to the visual motion. Received: 7 September 1993/Accepted in revised form: 2 May 1994     

Effect of the number of grey levels on the detectability of a simple line signal in visual noise

The number of grey levels, G, contained in a digitized image of an external event must affect the fidelity of reproduction of that event for physical reasons. The question arises as to whether there is a separate perceptual effect of G. Three experiments are described which investigate the effect of G on the visibility of a straight-line signal in visual noise using a signal detection analysis to separate the physical and perceptual effects of G. The results show that, for the type of displays employed, and for the specific task of detection of lines in visual noise, there was no effect of G on efficiency, which suggests that G had no separate perceptual effect.     

A method of assessing the heat load on workers moving about in a complex thermal environment

To determine the total heat load of workers moving about in a hot workshop where the environmental conditions vary widely from one location to the other, presents a difficult task. This paper describes a method, applying a combination of continuous recordings and manual measurements of the climatic factors. The worker's metabolic heat production was determined by time and motion study.The observed data were fed into an electronic computer, which was programmed to calculate the evaporation required to maintain heat balance (E_req).The obtained E_req values show a good correlation with the actual sweat loss of the workers employed in the observed workshops.

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Zusammenfassung Es ist schwierig die gesamte Hitzebelastung bei Arbeitern zu bestimmen, die in einer Werkhalle arbeiten, in der die Umweltbedingungen von einer Stelle zur anderen in weiten Grenzen schwanken. Hier wird eine Methode beschrieben, die eine Kombination von fortlaufenden Registrierungen und manuellen Messungen der klimatischen Faktoren ist. Die Wärmebildung der Arbeiter wurde in Zeit- und Bewegungsstudien gemessen. Die Werte wurden unter Verwendung einer elektronischen Rechenmaschine nach einem Programm ausgewertet, bei dem die Evaporation,die zur Erhaltung des Wärmegleichgewichts erforderlich ist (E_req), berechnet wurde. Die berechneten E_req Werte zeigten eine gute Korrelation mit dem wirkliche Schweissverlust der Arbeiter in dem untersuchten Arbeitsraum.

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Resume Il est très difficile de déterminer la charge imposée par la chaleur aux ouvriers travaillant dans de grands ateliers dans lesquels les conditions ambiantes varient énormément d'une place de travail à l'autre.On décrit ici une méthode basée sur l'utilisation combinée d'enregistrements continus et de mesures sporadiques des éléments du climat. Le développement calorifique des ouvriers a été mesuré aussi bien dans le temps que selon les mouvements effectués. Les chiffres ainsi obtenus furent traîtés par un ordinateur électronique dont le programme tendait à déterminer l'évaporation nécessaire au maintient de l'équilibre calorique du corps (E_req). Les valeurs calculées de E_req présentent une bonne corrélation avec la quantité de sueur sécrétée par les ouvriers travaillant dans le local examiné.

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Paper presented during the Fourth Int.Biometeorological Congress, New Brunswick, N.J., 26 August–2 September 1966.     

The effect of photoreceptor coupling and synapse nonlinearity on signal:noise ratio in early visual processing

Electrical coupling of vertebrate photoreceptors is well known to improve the signal: noise ratio in the photoreceptor layer for large-area stimuli. For example, if N photoreceptors are perfectly coupled to each other, the signal: noise ratio is improved for stimuli illuminating more than a number M = square root of N of the receptors but is made worse for small-area stimuli illuminating less than M of the N receptors. Using the model of Lamb & Simon (J. Physiol., Lond. 263, 257 (1976], which treats the photoreceptor layer as a square array of cells, each coupled through a resistive gap junction to the four cells around it, we show that the signal:noise ratio for small-area stimuli is much greater than would be expected from a model in which receptors are assumed to be perfectly coupled. Contrary to predictions made assuming perfect coupling, receptor coupling should not prevent rods from detecting single photons, but whether the single photon signal can be detected at the bipolar cell level depends on how signals are read out of the receptor layer. The signal:noise ratio in bipolar cells postsynaptic to the photo-receptor layer is determined partly by synaptic convergence and nonlinearity in synaptic transmission from receptors. If the synaptic gain decreases with light-induced receptor hyperpolarization, as is found experimentally, then receptor coupling can improve the postsynaptic signal:noise ratio for stimuli illuminating only one receptor, even though coupling decreases the presynaptic signal:noise ratio for such stimuli. Moreover, increasing the number of coupled receptors projecting to a bipolar cell can improve the signal:noise ratio for localized stimuli if the synapse is sufficiently nonlinear (although, for the degree of nonlinearity seen in lower vertebrates, synaptic convergence makes the ratio worse for the single photon event). The fact that receptor coupling and synaptic convergence can, under some circumstances, improve the signal:noise ratio in bipolar cells suggests a principle of retinal design that may compete with the requirements of high spatial resolution.     

Stealing behavior and the maintenance of a visual display in the satin bowerbird

Honest signals that indicate male quality have been observedin many species and are thought to have evolved to allow malesto assess rivals accurately and respond to "cheaters." Femalescould potentially also use the same honest signals as reliableindicators of male quality. In bowerbirds, the numbers of specificbower decorations may serve as an honest signal of male quality:this study investigates whether decoration stealing among malesatin bowerbirds at the Bunya Mountains, Australia, may alsoinvolve honest signals. In this study, we aimed to determine1) predictors for the degree to which individual male satinbowerbirds steal, and are stolen from, and 2) predictors forwhy some male pairs interact by stealing, whereas other pairsdo not. We also assessed how experimentally standardizing thenumber of decorations on bowers would affect the 1) frequencyof stealing, 2) specific interactions among males, and 3) distributionof decorations across bowers. Bower decorations were labeledand tracked through one breeding season. Males that were successfulstealers, stole from other successful stealers, had many feathersand bottle tops on their bowers and painted their bower wallsoften. Male pairs were more likely to interact by stealing iftheir bowers were in close proximity. Most of the stealing observedwas of a reciprocal nature. After we standardized the numbersand types of decorations on a small group of males' bowers,the mean number of daily stealing gains and the total numberof males interacting by stealing did not change. In addition,no significant novel stealing interactions were initiated afterthe manipulation. The average number of all bower decorationsand the average number of rosella feathers on a given male'sbower prior to the manipulation were proportional to the averagenumbers for the period after the manipulation. Furthermore,males that originally had better collections of decorationstended to suffer fewer losses due to stealing after the manipulation.Our results suggest that the total number of decorations, thetotal number of rosella feathers on a male's bower, and possiblystealing behavior, may form part of the basis of an honest signalindicating male quality and therefore might be correlated withmating success.     

Nonmonotonic noise tuning of BOLD fMRI signal to natural images in the visual cortex of the anesthetized monkey

BACKGROUND: The perceptual ability of humans and monkeys to identify objects in the presence of noise varies systematically and monotonically as a function of how much noise is introduced to the visual display. That is, it becomes more and more difficult to identify an object with increasing noise. Here we examine whether the blood oxygen level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging (BOLD fMRI) signal in anesthetized monkeys also shows such monotonic tuning. We employed parametric stimulus sets containing natural images and noise patterns matched for spatial frequency and intensity as well as intermediate images generated by interpolation between natural images and noise patterns. Anesthetized monkeys provide us with the unique opportunity to examine visual processing largely in the absence of top-down cognitive modulations and can thus provide an important baseline against which work with awake monkeys and humans can be compared. RESULTS: We measured BOLD activity in occipital visual cortical areas as natural images and noise patterns, as well as intermediate interpolated patterns at three interpolation levels (25%, 50%, and 75%) were presented to anesthetized monkeys in a block paradigm. We observed reliable visual activity in occipital visual areas including V1, V2, V3, V3A, and V4 as well as the fundus and anterior bank of the superior temporal sulcus (STS). Natural images consistently elicited higher BOLD levels than noise patterns. For intermediate images, however, we did not observe monotonic tuning. Instead, we observed a characteristic V-shaped noise-tuning function in primary and extrastriate visual areas. BOLD signals initially decreased as noise was added to the stimulus but then increased again as the pure noise pattern was approached. We present a simple model based on the number of activated neurons and the strength of activation per neuron that can account for these results. CONCLUSIONS: We show that, for our parametric stimulus set, BOLD activity varied nonmonotonically as a function of how much noise was added to the visual stimuli, unlike the perceptual ability of humans and monkeys to identify such stimuli. This raises important caveats for interpreting fMRI data and demonstrates the importance of assessing not only which neural populations are activated by contrasting conditions during an fMRI study, but also the strength of this activation. This becomes particularly important when using the BOLD signal to make inferences about the relationship between neural activity and behavior.     

Flash signal evolution in Photinus fireflies: Character displacement and signal exploitation in a visual communication system

Animal communication is an intriguing topic in evolutionary biology. In this comprehensive study of visual signal evolution, we used a phylogenetic approach to study the evolution of the flash communication system of North American fireflies. The North American firefly genus Photinus contains 35 described species with simple ON–OFF visual signals, and information on habitat types, sympatric congeners, and predators. This makes them an ideal study system to test hypotheses on the evolution of male and female visual signal traits. Our analysis of 34 Photinus species suggests two temporal pattern generators: one for flash duration and one for flash intervals. Reproductive character displacement was a main factor for signal divergence in male flash duration among sympatric Photinus species. Male flash pattern intervals (i.e., the duration of the dark periods between signals) were positively correlated with the number of sympatric Photuris fireflies, which include predators of Photinus. Females of different Photinus species differ in their response preferences to male traits. As in other communication systems, firefly male sexual signals seem to be a compromise between optimizing mating success (sexual selection) and minimizing predation risk (natural selection). An integrative model for Photinus signal evolution is proposed.     

Ornament evolution in dragon lizards: multiple gains and widespread losses reveal a complex history of evolutionary change

The expression in females of ornaments thought to be the target of sexual selection in males is a long-standing puzzle. Two main hypotheses are proposed to account for the existence of conspicuous ornaments in both sexes (mutual ornamentation): genetic correlation between the sexes and sexual selection on females as well as males. We examined the pattern of ornament gains and losses in 240 species of dragon lizards (Agamidae) in order to elucidate the relative contribution of these two factors in the evolution of mutual ornamentation. In addition, we tested whether the type of shelter used by lizards to avoid predators predicts the evolutionary loss or constraint of ornament expression. We found evidence that the origin of female ornaments is broadly consistent with the predictions of the genetic correlation hypothesis. Ornaments appear congruently in both sexes with some lineages subsequently evolving male biased sexual dimorphism, apparently through the process of natural selection for reduced ornamentation in females. Nevertheless, ornaments have also frequently evolved in both sexes independently. This suggests that genetic correlations are potentially weak for several lineages and sexual selection on females is responsible for at least some evolutionary change in this group. Unexpectedly, we found that the evolutionary loss of some ornaments is concentrated more in males than females and this trend cannot be fully explained by our measures of natural selection.     

Aggressive Signal Design in the Jacky Dragon (Amphibolurus muricatus): Display Duration Affects Efficiency

Design characteristics of signals, such as their duration, may have evolved to maximize signal efficiency. It is commonly assumed that constraints on signal design have usually shaped the most optimal display characteristics to improve signal transmission and information transfer of the signaller, and detection by intended receivers. In this study, we tested whether the characteristics (duration, speed and frequency) of an aggressive display, the push‐up body rock, exhibited by the Jacky dragon (Amphibolurus muricatus) have likely evolved for optimal signal efficiency, as it is able to draw attention to the signaller. We performed two video playback experiments using high‐resolution 3D animations testing the effect of variation in push‐up body rock structure. In experiment 1, we manipulated push‐up body rock display structure. We gradually increased the number of push‐ups exhibited by a digitally animated Jacky dragon increasing the overall display duration. In experiment 2, we developed four stimuli based on population‐typical push‐up body rock display for duration (short and long), and frequency of push‐ups (1 or 5 consecutive push‐ups) by manipulating push‐ups’ speed. In both experiments, we measured the probability of an orienting response and response latency of focal lizards when being exposed to the different stimuli. Our results showed that display duration is critically important for signal efficiency in the aggressive push‐up body rock display. If we are to understand the design characteristics of signals used in animal communication, then it appears important to consider the possible trade‐off between signal efficiency and costs.     

An artificial environment is often a noisy environment: auditory scene analysis and speech perception in noise

Our auditory system has to organize and to pick up a target sound with many components, sometimes rejecting irrelevant sound components, but sometimes forming multiple streams including the target stream. This situation is well described with the concept of auditory scene analysis. Research on speech perception in noise is closely related to auditory scene analysis. This paper briefly reviews the concept of auditory scene analysis and previous and ongoing research on speech perception in noise, and discusses the future direction of research. Further experimental investigations are needed to understand our perceptual mechanisms better.     

Sensing the environment: a historical perspective on integrin signal transduction

Cell adhesion mediated by integrin receptors has a critical function in organizing cells in tissues and in guiding haematopoietic cells to their sites of action. However, integrin adhesion receptors have broader functions in regulating cell behaviour through their ability to transduce bi-directional signals into and out of the cell and to engage in reciprocal interactions with other cellular receptors. This historical perspective traces the key findings that have led to our current understanding of these important functions of integrins.