How bees distinguish colors

Abstract

Behind each facet of the compound eye, bees have photoreceptors for ultraviolet, green, and blue wavelengths that are excited by sunlight reflected from the surrounding panorama. In experiments that excluded ultraviolet, bees learned to distinguish between black, gray, white, and various colors. To distinguish two targets of differing color, bees detected, learned, and later recognized the strongest preferred inputs, irrespective of which target displayed them. First preference was the position and measure of blue reflected from white or colored areas. They also learned the positions and a measure of the green receptor modulation at vertical edges that displayed the strongest green contrast. Modulation is the receptor response to contrast and was summed over the length of a contrasting vertical edge. This also gave them a measure of angular width between outer vertical edges. Third preference was position and a measure of blue modulation. When they returned for more reward, bees recognized the familiar coincidence of these inputs at that place. They cared nothing for colors, layout of patterns, or direction of contrast, even at black/white edges. The mechanism is a new kind of color vision in which a large-field tonic blue input must coincide in time with small-field phasic modulations caused by scanning vertical edges displaying green or blue contrast. This is the kind of system to expect in medium-lowly vision, as found in insects; the next steps are fresh looks at old observations and quantitative models.