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Retinal scanning and visual inputs in freely walking crickets
Author(s) -
LAMBIN MICHEL
Publication year - 1984
Publication title -
physiological entomology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.693
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1365-3032
pISSN - 0307-6962
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-3032.1984.tb00697.x
Subject(s) - cricket , monocular , visual field , biology , adaptation (eye) , orientation (vector space) , head (geology) , computer vision , communication , anatomy , computer science , neuroscience , geometry , psychology , mathematics , paleontology , ecology
. Freely walking crickets were filmed from above during their visual orientation towards a black stripe. A frame‐by‐frame analysis enabled head and body movements to be recorded. The animals walk in 200ms bouts (runs) separated by pauses of similar duration. During each run, rotations of the body axis are observed and some corrections of the course direction occur between successive runs. Generally, the crickets do not walk straight ahead but slightly sideways. Because no lateral head movements were observed during visually orientated locomotion, retinal scanning results from both rotations of the body axis and translation of the head. While walking, one of the target edges is maintained by the cricket on a relatively limited area of the retina, generally between 10d̀ and 25d̀ laterally. Thus, the cricket often records three pieces of information about each edge: one in the monocular visual field, and two in the binocular visual field. Nevertheless, between two pauses, the images of each edge shift asymmetrically on the retinae. Such movement could prevent receptor adaptation by modulation of the ommatidial excitation, or by stimulation of the neighbouring ommatidia. It is also suggested that antennal movements are influenced by the positions of the visually fixated target edges.