Date: Wednesday, 15.11.2023 15:20-17:00 CET
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Abstract:
High contrast, bright colours, and stripes are features of patterns used to warn of danger, across human activity, and in nature. Why are these effective? In this talk I will review what is known about warning signals in nature, and how they are studied. I will then describe new research from our group, where we explored the effects of warning signals on a biologically plausible model of early visual processing. The modelling suggest that warning signals might have specific effects on the brain that other patterns do not. I will also report on some experimental work suggesting that predators respond to carefully defined warning signal patterns in a way that supports the modelling.
