Dynamic visual cues induce jaw opening and closing by tiger beetles during pursuit of prey.

ABSTRACT: In dynamic locomotory contexts, visual cues often trigger adaptive behaviour by the viewer, yet studies investigating how animals determine impending collisions typically employ either stationary viewers or objects. Here, we describe a dynamic situation of visually guided prey pursuit in which both impending prey contact and escape elicit observable adaptive behaviours in the pursuer, a predatory beetle. We investigated which visual cues may independently control opening and closing of the beetle's jaws during chases of prey dummies. Jaw opening and closing typically occur when prey is within the 60° binocular field, but not at specific distances, angular sizes or time-to-collision. We show that a sign change in the expansion rate of the target image precedes jaw opening (16 ms) and closin

SUBMITTER: Zurek DB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4261868 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature