Publisher Description

This book is the only account of what honeybees actually see. Bees detect some visual features such as edges and colours, but there is no sign that they reconstruct patterns or put together features to form objects. Bees detect motion but have no perception of what it is that moves, and certainly they do not recognize "things" by their shapes. Yet they clearly see well enough to fly and find food with a minute brain. Bee vision is therefore relevant to the construction of simple artificial visual systems, for example for mobile robots. The surprising conclusion is that bee vision is adapted to the recognition of places, not things. In this volume, Adrian Horridge also sets out the curious and contentious history of how bee vision came to be understood, with an account of a century of neglect of old experimental results, errors of interpretation, sharp disagreements, and failures of the scientific method. The design of the experiments and the methods of making inferences from observations are also critically examined, with the conclusion that scientists are often hesitant, imperfect and misleading, ignore the work of others, and fail to consider alternative explanations. The erratic path to understanding makes interesting reading for anyone with an interest in the workings of science but particularly those researching insect vision and invertebrate sensory systems.

Back Cover

In this book, Adrian Horridge sets out the curious and contentious history of how the visual system of the honeybee came to be understood and how, in his view, the current accepted theory is completely wrong. Based on his own meticulous experimental work and historic analysis of past literature over many years, Horridge tells the story of a century of neglect of old experimental results, errors of interpretation, sharp disagreements, and failures of the scientific method. The design of the experiments and the methods of making inferences from observations are critically examined, with the conclusion that often scientists are hesitant, imperfect and misleading, ignoring the work of others, and failing to consider alternative explanations. It continues to give Horridge's conclusions of what honeybees actually see. For example, honeybees detect some visual features such as edges and colours, but there is no sign that they reconstruct patterns or put together features to form objects. Bees detect motion but have no perception of what it is that moves, and certainly they do not recognize objects or colours by their shapes. Yet they clearly see well enough to fly and find food with a minute brain. The surprising conclusion is that bee vision is adapted to the recognition of places, not things or colours. A proper understanding of the visual system of the honeybee (and other insects) can be used to manipulate visual cues in crop science and horticulture to encourage pollination, or enhance pest management. It is also vital for the development of artificial visual systems in robotics. This fascinating book is essential reading for any scientist with an interest in insect neuroscience and visual systems, but also for anyone with an interest the history of science and the way science itself can progress. Adrian Horridge is Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University, Canberra. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1969 and became one of the foremost neuroscientists of his generation. He has been working on insect visual systems since the 1960s and continues that work to this day.

Author Biography

Adrian Horridge is formerly of The Australian National University, Canberra.

Table of Contents

1: The Difficult Birth of Honeybee Colour Vision 2: No Way to Untie the Spell 3: Innovation, Deep Thought and Hard Work 4: The Fundamentals of the Insect Compound Eye 5: How Bees Distinguish Colours and Modulation 6: Feature Detectors, Cues, Resolution, Preferences and Coincidences 7: Symmetry and Asymmetry: Signposts in Route Finding 8: Bee Vision is Not Adapted for Pattern or Shape 9: The Visual Control of Flight 10: The Route to the Goal and Back Again 11: What Was Not Mentioned 12: What We Learned

Promotional

Suitable for Insect physiologists working on vision. Entomologists generally and invertebrate zoologist.

Promotional "Headline"

Suitable for Insect physiologists working on vision. Entomologists generally and invertebrate zoologist.

Details