Reindeer and the quest for Scottish enlichenment ...
In the hall of animal oddities, the reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) is the only mammal with a colour-shifting tapetum lucidum and the only ruminant with a lichen-dominated diet. These puzzling traits coexist with yet another enigma––ocular media that transmit up to 60% of ultraviolet (UV) light, enough...
Main Authors: | , , |
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Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | unknown |
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Zenodo
2023
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10389699 https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10389699 |
Summary: | In the hall of animal oddities, the reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) is the only mammal with a colour-shifting tapetum lucidum and the only ruminant with a lichen-dominated diet. These puzzling traits coexist with yet another enigma––ocular media that transmit up to 60% of ultraviolet (UV) light, enough to excite the cones responsible for colour vision. It is unclear why any day-active circum-Arctic mammal would benefit from UV visual sensitivity, but it could improve detection of UV-absorbing lichens against a background of UV-reflecting snows, especially during the extended twilight hours of winter. To explore this idea and advance our understanding of reindeer visual ecology, we recorded the reflectance spectra of several ground-growing (terricolous), shrubby (fruticose) lichens in the diets of reindeer living in Cairngorms National Park, Scotland.File as accepted for publication in i-Perception December 2023 ... |
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