
Visual Ecology
Animal eyes are exquisitely well adapted to support species-specific vision, which differs greatly across the vertebrate lineage. Accordingly, understanding retinal computations fundamentally requires understanding how the animal in question uses its eyes, and what aspects of the natural visual world are of particular behavioural relevance. To contribute to our growing understanding of animal visual ecology, we therefore complement our core physiology work with field work where we visit our animal’s natural habitat and map their visual environment using custom built camera and scanner systems. This in turn allows us to relate our physiology and behavioural data to their natural purpose.



Drawing: Artist’s’ impression of zebrafish larva with paramecium illuminated by the sun (by Sonia Aguera). Video: Paramecia (larval zebrafish prey) in a naturalistic tank placed in the midday sun, with “yellow” filter (left) and UV filter (right). Paramecia are much easier to spot in the UV channel as bright moving dots.
Related key publications
Bartel P$, Janiak FK, Osorio D, Baden T$. Colourfulness as a possible measure of object proximity in the larval zebrafish brain. (2020). bioRxiv doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.12.03.410241. direct link. pdf.
Yoshimatsu T, Bartel P, Schroeder C, Janiak FK, St-Pierre F, Berens P, Baden T$. Near-optimal rotation of colour space by zebrafish cones in vivo. (2020). bioRxiv doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.26.356089. direct link. pdf.
Zhou M*, Bear J*, Roberts PA, Janiak FK, Semmelhack J, Yoshimatsu T, Baden TbioRxiv version). direct link. pdf.
Zebrafish Retinal Ganglion Cells Asymmetrically Encode Spectral and Temporal Information Across Visual Space. Current Biology 30, 2927-2942. (Yoshimatsu Tdirect link. (bioRxiv version). pdf. Primer by Westo and Ala-Laurila.
Zimmermann MJY*, Nevala NE*, Yoshimatsu T*, Osorio D, Nilsson DE, Berens P, Baden T
Dehmelt FA, Meier R, Hinz J, Yoshimatsu T, Simacek CA, Wang K, Baden T, Arrenberg Ahttps://doi.org/10.1101/754408. direct link. pdf.
. (2019). Spherical arena reveals optokinetic response tuning to stimulus location, size and frequency across entire visual field of larval zebrafish. bioRxiv doi:Reviews
Baden Tdirect link. pdf.
, Euler T, Berens P. Understanding the retinal basis of vision across species. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, doi:10.1038/s41583-019-0242-1.Baden Thttps://doi..org/10.1016/j.semcdb.2020.05.028. direct link. pdf.
. Editorial for special issue on “Vertebrate Vision: Lessons from Non-Model Species”. Sem Cell Dev Biol.
Main people involved in visual ecology work

Carola Yovanovich
Frog vision

Naomi Green
Behaviour

Takeshi Yoshimatsu
Retinal circuits

Philipp Bartel
Retinal circuits

George Kafetzis
Vision in the ocean