QBI Seminar: Seeing at the limits: Vision and visual navigation in nocturnal insects

Event Details

Date:

Wednesday, 11 March 2015 - Wednesday, 11 March 2015

Time:

12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Room:

QBI Level 7 Auditorium

UQ Location:

Queensland Brain Institute (St Lucia)

URL:

http://www.qbi.uq.edu.au/neuroscience-seminars

Event category(s):

Full Description:: Professor Eric Warrant
Department of Biology, University of Lund, Lund, Sweden

Title: Seeing at the limits: Vision and visual navigation in nocturnal insects

Abstract:
Despite their tiny eyes and brains, nocturnal insects have remarkable visual abilities. Our recent work – particularly on fast-flying moths and bees and on ball-rolling dung beetles – has shown that nocturnal animals are able to distinguish colours, to detect faint movements, to learn visual landmarks, to orient to the faint pattern of polarised light produced by the moon and to navigate using the stars.

These impressive visual abilities are the result of exquisitely adapted eyes and visual systems, the product of millions of years of evolution. Nocturnal animals typically have highly sensitive eye designs and visual neural circuitry that is optimised for extracting reliable information from dim and noisy visual images. In my talk I will elaborate on these adaptations to show how biological sensors - even very small ones – are capable of high performance at the limits of what is physically possible.