4.1 Article

Reindeer and the quest for Scottish enlichenment

Journal

I-PERCEPTION
Volume 14, Issue 6, Pages -

Publisher

SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD
DOI: 10.1177/20416695231218520

Keywords

color; light; sensory plasticity/adaptation; visual search

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Reindeer is the only ruminant with a color-shifting tapetum lucidum and the only mammal with a lichen-dominated diet. It is unclear why reindeer, a day-active mammal in the Arctic region, would benefit from UV visual sensitivity, but it could improve their ability to detect lichens in their environment.
In the hall of animal oddities, the reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) is the only mammal with a color-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 color 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.

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