Reindeer and the quest for Scottish enlichenment

• Main Authors: Dominy, Nathaniel J, Hobaiter, Catherine, Harris, Julie M
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2023
• Subjects: Rangifer tarandus
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10389699

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