Low achromatic contrast sensitivity in birds: a common attribute shared by many phylogenetic orders

Abstract

Vision is an important sensory modality in birds, often outperforming other vertebrates in some visual abilities. One of these abilities, sensitivity to achromatic contrasts – the ability to discern luminance difference between two objects or an object and its background – has been shown to be lower in birds compared to other vertebrates. We conducted a comparative study to evaluate the achromatic contrast sensitivity of 32 bird species from 12 orders using the optocollic reflex technique. We then performed an analysis to test for potential variability in contrast sensitivity depending on the corneal diameter to the axial length ratio, a proxy of the retinal image brightness. To account for potential influences of evolutionary relatedness, we included phylogeny in our analyses. We found a low achromatic contrast sensitivity for all avian species studied compared to other vertebrates (except small mammals), with high variability between species. This variability is partly related to phylogeny, but appears to not be dependent upon image brightness.