Animal colour vision — behavioural tests and physiological concepts

@article{Kelber2003AnimalCV,
  title={Animal colour vision — behavioural tests and physiological concepts},
  author={Almut Kelber and Misha Vorobyev and Daniel C. Osorio},
  journal={Biological Reviews},
  year={2003},
  volume={78}
}
Over a century ago workers such as J. Lubbock and K. von Frisch developed behavioural criteria for establishing that non‐human animals see colour. Many animals in most phyla have since then been shown to have colour vision. Colour is used for specific behaviours, such as phototaxis and object recognition, while other behaviours such as motion detection are colour blind. Having established the existence of colour vision, research focussed on the question of how many spectral types of… 
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Major insights into the visual ecology of bees have been gained combining behavioural experiments and quantitative modelling, and asking how bee vision has influenced the evolution of flower colours and patterns is asked.
An Ishihara-style test of animal colour vision
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A novel test of colour vision in animals inspired by the Ishihara colour charts, which are widely used to identify human colour deficiencies, which seems to be highly effective and may well be adaptable to a range of other animals, including mammals, birds, bees and freshwater fish.
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TLDR
A guide to colour vision modelling is presented, a series of simulations are run, and a R package is provided – colourvision – to facilitate the use of colour vision models to generate meaningful and reproducible results.
Evolution of colour vision in mammals
  • G. H. Jacobs
  • Biology, Environmental Science
    Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
  • 2009
TLDR
The evolution of colour vision among the mammals is viewed, viewing that process in the context of relevant biological mechanisms, of variations in mammalian colour vision, and of the utility of color vision.
Photoreceptor sectral sensitivities in terrestrial animals: adaptations for luminance and colour vision
TLDR
This review outlines how eyes of terrestrial vertebrates and insects meet the competing requirements of coding both spatial and spectral information, and looks at spectral tuning and diversification among ‘long-wavelength’ receptors (sensitivity maxima at greater than 500 nm), which play a primary role in luminance vision.
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