Symposium number: 37

Title: VISION AND ITS FUNCTION

Principal organizer: Graham Martin
University of Birmingham, School of Biosciences, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK
email: g.r.martin@bham.ac.uk

Second organizer: Luz Marina Rojas
Universidad de Oriente, Instituto de Investigaciones en Biomedicina y Ciencias Aplicadas, Avenida Universidad, Cerro del Medio. Apartado de correos 094, Cumana, Sucre, Venezuela

First keynote speaker: Andy Bennett
University of Bristol, School Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UG, UK
Title of first keynote paper: Colour vision and its functions

Second keynote speaker: Graham Martin
University of Birmingham, School of Biosciences, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK
Title of second keynote paper: Visual fields and their functions in birds

Contributed talks

Symposium description: Vision is the prime sense through which birds gain information about their environment. Although vision is a complex and multifaceted sense and difficult to investigate, recent research has revealed remarkable differences between the visual world of birds and mammals, including humans. Such understanding is vital for research into bird behaviour and ecology where insight is needed into the information that birds have available to them through their senses. It is moreover essential for constructing sound evolutionary hypotheses regarding avian senses and their functions in life. Recent comparative research has provided new insights into the functions of vision in birds, especially with respect to how vision is used in conjunction with other senses to build a picture of the sensory world that birds inhabit. Connecting the avian sensory world to both behaviour and ecology will be the main theme of this symposium, a theme exemplified in the two key note addresses. The first of these will cover, inter alia, UVA sensitivity and its functions in foraging and mate choice, and the second binocular and panoramic vision and their functions in foraging and flight.

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