昆虫生理学生物学 (581).pdfVIP

Chapter 7 Visual Communication 7.1 Introduction Small black paper balls pulled through the air on a string with sufficient speed will attract male flies, which fly after and grab them. When dragonfly nymphs are presented with various still objects against a background of moving stripes, they will snap at them. Backswimmers, Notonecta, placed in a tank with white sides are unable to avoid being swept downstream in a current. What is going on? In all of these cases, the insects involved are using visual orientation (see Chapter 3) in the context of behavior. However, the above are not examples of insect visual communication, because to communicate there must be at least one intended receiver. In the context of orientation, vision is extremely important to most insects, as it is to most animals in general. However, for communication, insects tend to rely more heavily upon their other sensory systems. Working primarily with vertebrates, the early ethologists found visual commu- nication to be an unusually appealing subject for behavioral study for at least two major reasons—the tremendous amount of information that visual signals can carry, and the fact that visual systems play a dominant role in the behavior of humans. Therefore, it is not surprising that in the development of ethology over the last cen- tury, processes of visual communication have played a starring role. Konrad Lorenz, for example, derived many of his theories from the study of fish and bird displays— structures and behavior patterns that function as visual signals between conspecific animals. Niko Tinbergen’s landmark 1948 paper on social releasers also took most of its examples from visual signals. Ethologists have found that at least two impor- tant signaling phenomena are more readily studied in visual signals than in auditory or chemical signals. One is the origin of signaling structures; the other is the evolu- tionary transformation of signa