Colour vision as an adaptation to frugivory in primates
@article{Osorio1996ColourVA,
title={Colour vision as an adaptation to frugivory in primates},
author={Daniel C. Osorio and Misha Vorobyev},
journal={Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences},
year={1996},
volume={263},
pages={593 - 599}
}Most mammals possess two classes of cone, sensitive to short and to long wavelengths of light, but Old World primates (Catarrhini) have distinct medium and long wavelength sensitive classes. The sensitivities of these cones photopigments are alike in all catarrhines with peaks at about 440 nm (‘blue’), 533 nm (‘green’) and 565 nm (‘red’). One possible reason for the evolution and conservatism of catarrhine trichromacy is that colour vision is a specialization for finding food. A model of…
409 Citations
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Four trichromatic primate species in Kibale Forest, Uganda, eat leaves that are colour discriminated only by red–greenness, a colour axis correlated with high protein levels and low toughness, which implicate leaf consumption, a critical food resource when fruit is scarce, as having unique value in maintaining trichromeacy in catarrhines.
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The results suggest that luminance contrast can serve as an important cue in short-range foraging attempts despite other sensory cues that could be available and the advantage of red-green color vision in primates may not be as salient as previously thought.
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The uniform trichromacy of Alouatta is known to have arisen separately from that of catarrhines, perhaps from a polymorphic arrangement similar to that seen in other platyrrhines.
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Comparative studies of mammalian eyes indicate that primates are the only placental mammals that have in their retina a pre-existing neural machinery capable of utilising the signals of an additional spectral type of cone, and the failure of non-primate placental mammal mammals to evolve trichromacy can be explained by constraints imposed on the wiring of retinal neurones.
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By treating the task of searching for food as a signal-detection task, it is shown that, of all possible combinations of cone sensitivities, the spectral positions of the actual primate pigments are optimal for finding fruit or young leaves against the background of mature leaves.
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