Bees see the world different to us. A major difference between humans’ and bees’ colour vision is that the three types of photoreceptors in humans are sensitive to blue, green and red light, whereas those in bees are sensitive to ultraviolet, blue and green light. We introduce a cheap and simple digital approach to reassemble colour images in bee view from UV-, blue- and green-photos. Photo editing allows to represent ultraviolet as blue, blue as green and green as red. Here we demonstrate the multiple advantages of this technique: Tiny details of flowers such as stamens, pollen grains and floral guides that escape spectrophotometric methods are visualized by false colour photography.
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| Visibility of colour
changes in Forget-me-not flowers for humans (top) and bees (bottom) |
False colour images in bee view are more informative and easier to
interpret as UV-photos and can be taken in the field. The minimal equipment
needed includes a tripod, a modified digital camera, two colour filters, and a
white standard. Testing this method yielded interesting findings including flowers
displaying a blue bull’s eye and subtle colour changes. Moreover, false colour
images let us see that flowers that are attractive for our eyes may be inconspicuous
for bees and let us understand that showy flowers are adapted for bees’ eyes.
Read the scientific publication in JPE.
