Publication Date:
2012-01-24
Description:
Sexual selection studies normally compare signal strengths, but signal components and sensory processing may interact to create misleading or attention-capturing illusions. Visual illusions can be produced by altering object and scene geometry in ways that trick the viewer when seen from a particular direction. Male great bowerbirds actively maintain size-distance gradients of objects on their bower courts that create forced-perspective illusions for females viewing their displays from within the bower avenue. We show a significant relationship between mating success and the female's view of the gradient; this view explains substantially more variance in mating success than the strength of the gradients. Illusions may be widespread in other animals because males of most species display to females with characteristic orientation and distance, providing excellent conditions for illusions.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Kelley, Laura A -- Endler, John A -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2012 Jan 20;335(6066):335-8. doi: 10.1126/science.1212443.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, Geelong, VIC 3216, Australia.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22267812" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Attention
;
Female
;
Male
;
*Mating Preference, Animal
;
*Optical Illusions
;
Passeriformes/*physiology
;
Reproduction
;
*Sexual Behavior, Animal
;
Size Perception
;
Space Perception
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
Permalink
