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Eye Ultrastructure, Colour Reception and Behaviour

Abstract

IN many animals—both vertebrates and invertebrates—certain innate behavioural patterns (in, for example, feeding and sexual behaviour) are preferentially elicited by stimuli with specific qualities (such as colour of visual stimuli) which act as so-called releasers. An initial “tuning” of a stimulus as a releaser may take place at the receptor level (as with receptor specificity in night moth olfaction). One might ask whether, in some cases, further mechanisms may exist in the transmission of energy to the receptors which enhance selectively that quality of the stimulus which characterizes it as a releaser.

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BERNHARD, C., BOËTHIUS, J., GEMNE, G. et al. Eye Ultrastructure, Colour Reception and Behaviour. Nature 226, 865–866 (1970). https://doi.org/10.1038/226865a0

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