File(s) under permanent embargo
Visual Background Choice and Light Environment Affect Male Guppy Visual Contrast
journal contribution
posted on 2022-11-23, 05:52 authored by John EndlerJohn Endler, DM Raggay, S Maerowitz-McMahan, DN Reznick, RC FullerMale guppies (Poecilia reticulata) have multiple colored spots and perform courtship displays near the edges of streams in Trinidad in shallow water flowing through rainforest. Depending upon the orientation of the pair, the female sees the male displays against gravel or other stream bed substrates or against the spacelight—the roughly uniform light coming from the water column away from the bank. We observed courting pairs in two adjacent natural streams and noted the directions of each male display. We found that the female sees the male more often against spacelight than against gravel when females either faced the spacelight from the opposite bank or from downstream, or both. Visual modelling using natural substrate reflectances and field light measurements showed higher chromatic contrast of males against spacelight than against substrates independent of the two ambient light environments used during displays, but achromatic contrast depended upon the ambient light habitat. This suggests that courtship involves both chromatic and achromatic contrast. We conclude that the orientation of courting pairs and the ambient light spectrum should be accounted for in studies of mate choice, because the visual background and light affect visibility, and these differ with orientation.
History
Journal
VisionVolume
6Article number
56Pagination
1-18Location
Basel, SwitzerlandPublisher DOI
ISSN
0972-2629eISSN
2249-5304Language
engPublication classification
C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journalIssue
3Publisher
MDPI AGUsage metrics
Categories
No categories selectedKeywords
Licence
Exports
RefWorks
BibTeX
Ref. manager
Endnote
DataCite
NLM
DC