Browsing by Author "Radford, Andrew N."
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Item Out of the blue: the evolution of horizontally polarized signals in Haptosquilla (Crustacea, Stomatopoda, Protosquillidae)(The Company of Biologists Ltd, 2014-07-09) How, Martin J.; Porter, Megan L.; Radford, Andrew N.; Feller, Kathryn D.; Temple, Shelby E.; Caldwell, Roy L.; Marshall, N. Justin; Cronin, Thomas W.; Roberts, Nicholas W.The polarization of light provides information that is used by many animals for a number of different visually guided behaviours. Several marine species, such as stomatopod crustaceans and cephalopod molluscs, communicate using visual signals that contain polarized information, content that is often part of a more complex multidimensional visual signal. In this work, we investigate the evolution of polarized signals in species of Haptosquilla, a widespread genus of stomatopod, as well as related protosquillids. We present evidence for a pre-existing bias towards horizontally polarized signal content and demonstrate that the properties of the polarization vision system in these animals increase the signal-to-noise ratio of the signal. Combining these results with the increase in efficacy that polarization provides over intensity and hue in a shallow marine environment, we propose a joint framework for the evolution of the polarized form of these complex signals based on both efficacy-driven (proximate) and content-driven (ultimate) selection pressures.