Many animals strongly rely on their visual sense, as it provides information about the natural environment with particularly high dimensionality. The high complexity of visual information makes it suitable to control a wide range of behaviors, however it also requires the visual system to filter and streamline the input information to extract the most relevant information. Moreover, to ensure efficient processing of information, visual systems are often adapted to the most frequently encountered features in an animal’s natural environment. This principle is particularly critical for animals with limited neural capacity, like insects: they possess small eyes and tiny brains. Nevertheless, they are capable to perform precisely controlled behaviors, like complex flight maneuvers, while solely relying on their visual sense. During this PhD, a neuroethological approach was used to extend the understanding of adaptation mechanisms in the insect visual system, with the hummingbird hawkmoth Macroglossum stellatarum serving as the model organism. Environmental imaging, behavioral flight experiments, neuroanatomy, and electrophysiology were combined to investigate three key aspects: First, the natural visual input received by the visual system; second, the adaptation strategies of the hawkmoth motion vision system to the image statistics of its natural habitat and how these strategies are expressed in behavior; and third, the integration of different adaptation mechanisms into the motion vision system at the neuronal level. Ultimately, it was demonstrated that species-specific adaptations in the motion vision system support robust behavioral control within natural environments.
Ronja Bigge (Mon,) studied this question.