1 What does an insect see? A short review. Adrian Horridge Research School of Biological Sciences, Australian National University, Box 475, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia. [email protected] (a) target at 1 m 9c target at 2 27 cm position 1 2 baffle hole in baffle choice chamber bees fly in here (b) 9 cm 27 cm reward box choice chamber 25 cm 100 target at 2 50 target at 1 Introduction Some would say that we may never know what insects actually see. Indeed, little can be said about most of them, but the honeybee is a special case because bees can be trained. Early workers trained bees with a number of patterns, and the bees learned to land on the one that rewarded them with odourless sugar solution. Later, individually marked bees learned to fly into an experimental choice chamber and select one of two patterns displayed vertically on the back walls (Fig. 1). At the centre of each pattern was a hole, but only one of these holes led to a small chamber behind, where the bees found the reward. The two patterns (and the reward) changed sides every 5 min to make the bees look at them, rather than simply choose the rewarded side. The trained bees were then tested with a large variety of test patterns that were intercalated so that the bees could not learn them in the tests. air baffle Summary:- The units of vision are small motion detectors and feature detectors 3 ommatidia wide. The latter respond to passing edges and their orientation. The responses of the edge and area detectors are summed by type and position in each local region of the eye, to form cues. The coincidence of cues in a local region is remembered as a label on a landmark in that retinotopic direction. Bees learn landmark labels to identify a place and find the reward; they are not interested in patterns. position 2 Email: Figure 1. (a) The apparatus for training bees with the target at a controlled range from the point of the bees’ decision. The bees fly in the front, then have to choose between the two targets and enter the hole in a transparent baffle. The targets, with the reward box behind one, are interchanged every 5 min. (b) The angles subtended by the targets at two different positions 1 and 2. (after Horridge, 2006b) 2 A century of training and then testing the trained bees at first revealed that the bees measured a few parameters of patterns, namely, the total length of edges in the pattern, the area and colour, as if they had feature detectors for edges and also for brightness of areas, region by region. They also detected certain properties of the whole pattern, namely whether it was circular or had radial spokes or sectors, and whether it was smooth or highly disrupted (Hertz, 1933). In very large patterns, subtending >100º, bees learned the positions of areas of black in the periphery of the rewarded pattern and just below the reward hole, and then selected ‘the best fit’ when tested against other patterns (Wehner, 1969). In all the work until recently, noone considered that ‘the best fit’ for the bees was a place rather than a pattern. The size and other properties of the units in the visual system which detected and measured the contrast, orientation of edges, or the radial and tangential contours were unknown. The feature detectors In each ommatidium of the compound eye, bees have three colour types of ordinary photoreceptors, with their spectral sensitivity peaking in the UV, blue and green. These feed into an array of feature detectors with balanced excitatory and inhibitory inputs that are so arranged that they detect contrast at edges but are insensitive to changes in brightness (Fig. 2). The total modulation in a local region, effectively the total length of edge, is the preferred cue. The feature detectors for modulation were measured in the following way. Bees were trained to discriminate between a horizontal and a vertical black grating, or between a grating of any orientation and a grey paper of matched brightness. The minimum period that was resolved was 2º, irrespective of the orientation of the rewarded grating. The orientations of the edges are known to be discriminated only by the input channel from the green receptors (Giger and Srinivasan, 1996). The limit was little more when the bars were coloured to remove contrast to the green receptors (Srinivasan and Lehrer, 1988; Horridge 2003e). Therefore the difference between the finest gratings was detected, not by orientation detectors, but by radially-symmetrical modulation detectors that resolve a 2º grating irrespective of the colour contrast (Fig. 2b). receptors (a) four feature detectors (c) -1 (b) -1 -1 -1 -1 +6 -1 -1 +1 +2 -1 +1 -1 -1 (e) (d) -1 +1 -1 -1 +1 -1 +2 +2 -1 +1 -1 -1 -1 +1 Figure 2. (a) The convergence of receptors on the four types of feature detectors for edges, all of which are insensitive to intensity changes. (b) The radially symmetrical modulation detector. (c-e) The detectors of edge orientation with bilateral symmetry are green sensitive and colour blind. The numbers show the relative excitation and inhibition by light. (after Horridge, 2006d) 3 The feature detectors for edge orientation are symmetrical about their axis of orientation (Fig. 2c, d, e), as shown by the inability of the bee to distinguish which side of an edge is dark and which is light. To measure their minimum size, bees that had been trained to discriminate between orientations of edges at 45º and 135º were tested with a large number of short parallel edges that were each reduced in length (with the same total length of edge) until the orientation was no longer resolved. The minimum length for resolution of orientation was 3º (Horridge, 2003d). The edge detectors have inputs only from the green receptors and are therefore colour-blind. When the bees were trained on a black and white grating at 45º versus the same grating at 135º, there was no difference in modulation so the bees were obliged to use the less preferred difference in edge orientation, and the limiting period was 3º (Horridge, 2003e). The cues related to edges The cues are formed by the summation of responses of each kind of feature detector within the local region on each side of the target or pattern that the bee is looking at (Horridge, 1997b). Just as the receptors count photons, each cue detector totals the coincident responses of its own array of feature detectors. Although simple and sparse, cues are usually sufficient to identify a place with certainty. The absence of a cue is itself a cue (Horridge, 2007). Only one cue of each type is learned in each local region of the eye at the range of positions where it was displayed during the training (Horridge, 1999, 2003a). The summation of feature detectors into cues has some counterintuitive effects on what the bees can detect. Most significant of these, the layout is lost at this point in the processing (Fig. 3), but the positions of the centres of the cues and hubs are preserved and used as cues (Horridge, 2003a, 2006b). feature detectors (a) vertical orientation cue (b) oblique orientation cue (c) orientation cancelled (d) hub hub orientation cancelled (e) (f) hub one tangential cue hub one radial cue Figure 3. Summation of feature detectors for edge orientations in various ways. Pattern is lost but cues emerge. (a) Detectors with vertical axes. (b) A line of detectors with oblique orientation. (c) Mixed orientations cancel. (d) The orientation cue is cancelled in the edges of a square but weak hubs are detected at the corners. 3) but the positions of the centres (e, f) A tangential and a radial cue and their hubs. 4 The bees detect and learn the cues but they have no information about the distribution of the feature detectors that were summed. Consequently, there are many pairs of different patterns that the bees cannot distinguish. In tests, the trained bees detect familiar cues in unfamiliar patterns but the actual patterns are of no interest (Horridge, 1996a, 1997a). To a bee, the orientation cue is a kind of average of the orientations of edges in a local region (Fig. 3d). For example, in a square or a square cross the orientation cue is cancelled by the edges at right angles to each other (Srinivasan et al., 1994). Similarly, the orientation is destroyed when a bar is broken up into squares or cut into square steps that are resolved by the feature detectors for edge orientation (Horridge, 2003c). The greatest gap that can be spanned in a row of small squares is 3º, which is a measure of the maximum size of the feature detectors for edge orientation. The edge detectors also collaborate together to detect the hubs of radial or circular patterns (Fig. 3e, f). The type of pattern, radial or tangential, and the position of the hub, can be learned, but again the actual lay-out of the pattern is lost in the summation (Horridge, 2006b). There are surprisingly few types of cues, but more may be discovered. There is an order of preference for learning the cues in the training situation, with modulation the most preferred, then area, position of centre, a black spot, colour, radial edges, bilateral symmetry, average orientation, and finally tangential or circular edges, which are avoided (Horridge, 2007). Despite many searches, no more have been found. This is a small but obviously adequate collection of cues for the varied life of a bee. Most of the natural panorama exhibits a variety of orientations of edges with a strong modulation cue for bees, but within each local region of the eye the orientation cues cancel out and only the modulation of green and blue receptors remains. Here and there, however, the bee encounters parallel edges, for example in grass or a branch of a tree, and occasionally the significant symmetry of a flower or spider’s web. Cues related to areas The unit detectors for areas of black or colour appear to be single receptors. The responses of blue and of green receptors are separately totalled within the local areas on each side of the target that the bee is looking at. The totals for an area are kept separate from those for its edges. An area leaves a memory trace for (number of receptors) times (brightness) and the position of the centre, but nothing about shape (Horridge, 2003b, 2005). Bees discriminate between two simple shapes by the cues for average edge orientation in the local eye region for that particular pair of patterns (Horridge, 2009), not by the form of a closed boundary, which is lost in the summation (Fig. 3). The positions of blue, green and yellow areas are separately discriminated (von Frisch, 1914; Gould, 1985; Horridge, 2000b) , but not all the areas are learned separately, blue being the preferred and sometimes the only position learned, even if it lies on the unrewarded target (Horridge, 2007). The positions of the centres of two areas of black or colour can be remembered as cues, but where they are close together, the bees detect their common centre. This merging of the two areas diminishes as the spots move apart, from an angle subtending 5º, until at 15º they are quite separate (Horridge, 2003b). Labels on landmarks The group of cues that are detected at the same time by a local region of the eye form the label of a landmark, irrespective whether there is a single or several actual landmarks in that part of the panorama (Horridge, 2006b, 2007). The label can be learned. All that matters is 5 62.4% n = 221 37.6% train, bees land on the reward hole (c) 65.2% n = 155 34.8% train, subtending 100 deg Figure 4 (a) Failure of discrimination at a subtense of 50º between an irregular pattern in which the orientation cue cancels out versus the same pattern rotated by 180º. Neither the whole pattern nor the positions or orientations of individual bars are discriminated. (b) The patterns are discriminated when the bees land on the target, or (c) when the target subtends 100º in the apparatus in Fig. 1. (after Horridge and Zhang, 1995). field sizes 5--60 deg (b) external UV receptors green receptors blue receptors tonic phasic phasic areas edges edges tonic channels in colour photoreceptors green sensitive modulation monopolar cells, amplified colour blind other lamina cells feature detec -tors for orientation motion detection radial hub (3) average orientation radial hub (6) tangential hub modulation detectors colour blind cues 49.4% 50.6% n = 447 3.5 deg 2.5 deg 2.5 deg train subtending 50 deg reward hole cues in colour (a) colour size coincidences of cues labels on landmarks feature detectors formed cues formed by sums and differences of feature detectors range piloting directs fixation flight control internal that the bee remembers the coincidence of responses of cues in that local region of the eye. Landmark labels are therefore remembered retinotopically, i.e., at a place on the eye. The group of landmark labels at wide angles to each other that are detected at the same time by the whole eye make the key to the recognition of a place (Collett et al., 2002; Fry and Wehner, 2002). At each level, the coincidence of inputs is the signal to pass the response to the next level. The whole process from receptors through to feature detectors and then to cues and landmark labels (Fig. 5), is done region by region on the eye, and therefore in coordinates related to the position of the head and body axis. For this reason, bees scan the scene in the horizontal direction as they fly, and orient Figure 5. A map of the formal interactions between the different processing channels in a single local region of the eye. The receptors at the top feed through the lamina to feature detectors and then to cues. Approximate field sizes are shown on the left. Any resemblance to the bees’ optic lobe is not accidental. their head and body to detect landmark labels and find the place of the reward. In Skinner’s terminology, learning the labels to recognize a place must be done by ‘operant’ conditioning, which is now part of ‘active vision’. 6 The effect of pattern size In the earliest experiments, it was thought that the bees learned the whole pattern because they recognized circles and radial patterns, apparently as a whole, irrespective of exact size and number of radial arms. The natural inference was that the bees learned the abstract idea of the shape, possibly in any orientation (Hertz, 1933). This idea was eventually rejected by experiments in which the trained bees were presented with the training pattern versus quite a different pattern which displayed the preferred cues and no unfamiliar cues. The trained bees could then not tell the difference between the new pattern and the one they were trained on, showing that they were interested in the cues, not the pattern (Horridge, 2006a, 2009). The lay-out of very large patterns subtending 130º is also learned (Wehner, 1969) because they overlap more that one local region of the eye and allow the bees to learn something about the configuration of its regional differences (Fig. 4c). Large patterns are discriminated by their peripheral parts (Horridge, 1996b). Patterns that subtend 40º or less in the Ychoice apparatus are learned by a single eye region (Fig. 4a), unless they are strongly radial (Horridge, 2006b, 2009). By varying the angle that the target subtends at the eye (Fig. 1), we have a way to measure the local regions in which each cue is summed, which is not necessarily the same for each cue. For a black area, it is about 50º; for the position of the centre of a black spot about 15º (Horridge, 2003b); for the summation of orientation also 15º; for the separation of two colours about 10º (Gould, 1985; Horridge, 1999b); for the summation of a circular or radial elements, at least 45º; for the position of the hub only about 10º (Horridge, 2006b). The ability of the bee to discriminate the shape of an object by the positions of peripheral bits is therefore governed by its angular size, because the size of the local regions appears to be fixed. The bee eye has a total angle of about 300º, which is probably divided into 10-20 regions for coincidences of cues (Fig. 6). This is plenty for the discrimination of a pattern when the bee lands on it and discriminates the lay-out of patches of black (Lehrer and Campan, 2006) or recognizes a familiar place by a few landmarks (Fry and Wehner, 2002). field fields * * * * * * * * small blue here yellow here large size here horizontal average orientation here modulation size centres of areas radial cue average orientations tangential cue * * cues in order of preference Figure 6. The display in the panorama that is detected by the bee. Each oval subtending about 30º represents a local region in the bee eye. Within each region no more than one cue of each kind is detected. Some of the cues that are familiar enable the bee to recognize a place. Resolution in the processing hierarchy Resolution depends on the angular subtense and shape of the field of the detector and on the separation between detectors. The size of the summation field that determines the resolution of cues is not the same for each cue (Horridge, 2005). At the level of coincidences of receptor 7 responses that form feature detectors, we have:- for modulation, a resolution of 2º. On account of the lateral inhibition, this is better than for a single receptor. For directional edge detection, bees have 3º; for detection of a small black spot, 2º-3º. At the level of coincidences of feature detector responses to form cues, they are:modulation in regions of 20º across; orientation in regions of 15º-20º across; position of areas of black or colour, 12º-16º; for the position of the centre, 5º. At the level of coincidences of cues to form a landmark label, we have areas up to 45º across for the summation, and a resolution of 15º-20º for the separation between neighbouring landmarks. The resolution of the angle of orientation of an edge is poor because the feature detectors are independent and so short; a difference of 45º is the limit for a single bar, 30º for a parallel grating. At each stage in processing, there is a compromise between the resolution, which is better in small summation fields, and the ability to find the target, or the sensitivity, which is better in large fields Generalization of patterns Generalization is the acceptance of an unfamiliar pattern by trained bees in the place of the familiar training pattern. Early last century it was found that bees could be trained with a variety of different squares or equilateral triangles that were presented simultaneously or in succession, called generalization in the training (Hertz, 1933; Anderson, 1977). The trained bees could also recognize the familiar training pattern when it was presented at a different size. It was concluded that the bees learned an abstract feature that was common to the different targets. These abstract features turned out to be the usual cues that were detected in parallel. When bees are trained in the Ychoice apparatus, the patterns are interchanged every 5 min to make the bees look at them (Fig. 1). The bees learn the preferred cues displayed within the pattern and ignore local cues outside the pattern. In the experimental apparatus, the patterns are approximately the size of the local eye region, so that only one cue of each type is learned on each side of the pattern. This is sufficient for the task in hand but insufficient information to distinguish the training patterns from many other patterns that display the same cues. The trained bees accept an unfamiliar pattern as long as the familiar cues are detected in the expected positions, and no unfamiliar cue is added. The behaviour of a bee trained on a 40º pattern is similar to that of a cheap lock that is opened by several keys. A bee trained on a natural place with several landmarks resembles an expensive lock that is opened by only one key. Generalization is therefore nothing to do with cognition or recognition of an abstract similarity. It is a sign of a poor education. Errors of recognition are less likely when the training pattern is very large, so that it extends over several eye regions (Figs 4c, 6). In the natural situation with several landmarks, each displaying several cues, the trained bees ignore small changes but do not accept any substitutes. Misleading terminology Words and phrases borrowed from the cognitive sciences, such as “perception of shape”, “similarity”, “triangularity” and “recognition”, supported anthropomorphic ideas about mysterious cognitive abilities of the bees. To avoid unjustified conclusions, a phrase such as “discrimination of difference”, when translated for the bee, becomes “cue in one but not the other” or perhaps “avoid unfamiliar cue”. In examples where bees discriminated between A and B, it was sometimes concluded that they actually saw or at least recognized A and B (for example, Dyer et al., 2005). The bees, however, detected only a difference in the 8 cues and their positions in that one task in hand, so that they could recognize the place. There was no evidence for perception of A or B as patterns or objects. Training to discriminate two patterns is an entirely artificial situation in which the bees adopt their usual strategy of looking for cues to identify the place of the reward. Design of the bee visual system The extremely wide visual field of the compound eye is useful to detect approaching enemies and the direction of an open flight path. In the bee, the wide field has two additional functions. When bees return to a familiar feeding place, they make use of the wide visual field to remember at every moment the direction that the axis of the body and head points relative to the sun-compass and the direction of home. They also recognize a place by landmarks detected at large angles on the eye (Collett et al., 2002). A landmark is not necessarily an isolated object, it can be parts of distributed branches, flowers or pebbles, that display sufficient coincidences of cues. It will be noticed that nowhere is the pattern of interest to the bee. Patterns were introduced to bees as oriented bars, spots, stars or triangles in the early days of bee training and persisted as experimental tools for a century. Bees appear to distinguish between the patterns but actually they detect only a difference in the cues. Bee vision is designed to pick up the flow field in flight and the labels on landmarks when finding a place. Problems of analysis For the whole of the past century bee vision was a mystery. In particular, the kind of system involved was unknown. There was no systematized way, no paradigm, to help find the crucial questions to ask. First, it was not understood that bee vision is adapted to the recognition of places. That requires a 300º not a 40º field. The effect of pattern size was ignored. It was a major problem discover what the bees actually detected. Work on other visual systems was of little help. The convictions of the experimenters about the cognitive abilities of the bees delayed progress. It was thought that bees actually see the world or some aspects of the panorama, even if fuzzy. It was thought that landmarks were isolated outstanding objects that the bees used as beacons. The bees learned to come to patterns that were shuffled about, and the experimenters were convinced that the bees recognized and remembered the patterns. But bee vision was hopelessly counter-intuitive. Many tests of the trained bees are required before the actual cues are identified, and further tests before alternative explanations can be ruled out. The experimenters could not detect the cues. The bees could not detect the patterns, only the cues and their coincidences to identify the place of the reward. Anything could be a landmark. Finally, it was shown that when trained bees were tested with the training pattern versus a different pattern that displayed the same cues, and no unfamiliar cues, they could not remember which pattern they were trained on. This experiment was repeated for all the kinds of patterns that had been used to train bees (Horridge, 2006a, 2009). Half a visual system This analysis of the formal interactions of the inputs and cues would be little more than elementary common sense in computer vision. There are three successive stages of coincidences of inputs of filters laid out in the angular coordinates of the compound eye. The edge detectors resemble Canny detectors (Fig. 2) and are only 3º in size. Individually their positions are not recorded. Each type is summed to form one cue in each local eye region. The coincidence of cues in a local region is the only retained 9 information about that part of the image. The coincidence of landmark labels is recalled only for the recognition of a place. There is little sign of central control of field sizes or top-down adjustment. That is only half the mechanism, however, because the visual processing is retinotopic and the eye is carried on the head on the body. The posture and movement is controlled by the vision itself and learning is operant, that is, instrumental, with instant feedback. The eye is useless without its control of its own moving platform. That is the next frontier. References chromatic properties of orientation analysis. Journal of Comparative Physiology A 178, 763-769. Gould, J.L., 1985. How bees remember flower shapes. 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