A Preliminary Report on the Analysis of the Optomotor System of the Honey Bee — Single Unit Recordings During Stimulation with Spectral Lights

Abstract

Extracellular single unit recordings were made from directionally specific movement-sensitive neurones in the optic lobe of the honey bee. It is highly likely that these neurones belong to the optomotor system. When these neurones were stimulated by a moving striped pattern consisting of two monochromatic spectral colours of equal animal-subjective brightness, no colour-specific effect could be detected. The conclusion thus follows that the optomotor system of the bee is independent of its “colour vision system”, and that the former system does not transfer colour information. The spectral sensitivity of these movement-sensitive neurones is very similar to the intracellularly-recorded green receptor spectral sensitivity curve: the green receptor thus has a dominant influence on the optomotor system and is perhaps the only receptor type connected to it.