Abstract
In this chapter we show that tabanid flies are attracted to horizontally polarized light stimulating their ventral eye region. Female and male tabanids use this polarotaxis governed by the horizontal E-vector to find water, while another type of polarotaxis based on the degree of polarization serves host finding by female tabanids. We show that female tabanids are less attracted to bright than dark hosts, the reason for which is partly that dark hosts reflect light with higher degrees of polarization than bright hosts. We also demonstrate that the use of a striped fur pattern has the advantage that such coat patterns attract far fewer tabanids than either homogeneous black, brown, grey or white equivalents. The attractiveness of striped patterns to tabanids is also reduced if only polarization modulations (parallel stripes with alternating orthogonal directions of polarization) occur in homogeneous grey surfaces. The attractiveness to tabanids decreases with decreasing stripe width, and stripes below a certain width threshold are unattractive at all to tabanids. Further, the stripe widths of zebra coats fall in a range where the striped pattern is most unattractive to tabanids. Tabanids are strongly attracted by CO2 and ammonia emitted by their hosts. We show here that the poor visual attractivity of stripes to tabanids is not overcome by olfactory attractiveness. Finally, we show that dark spots on a bright coat surface also disrupt the visual attractiveness to tabanids. The smaller and the more numerous the spots, the less attractive the host is to tabanids. The attractiveness of spotty patterns to tabanids is also reduced if the target exhibits spottiness only in the angle of polarization pattern, while being homogeneous grey with a constant high degree of polarization. This could be one of the possible evolutionary benefits that explains why spotty coat patterns are so widespread in mammals, especially in ungulates, many species of which are tabanid hosts.
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Notes
- 1.
It is well known among horse keepers that in shady refuges, in forests or in stables, horses suffer tabanid annoyance only rarely. Tabanid flies do not follow horses and other host animals in large numbers to such shady places more or less surrounded by vegetation or artificial walls. The reasons for this are the following (Horváth et al. 2010b): (1) Tabanids need enough free, open space to fly. (2) Many tabanid species need a higher body temperature to start flying so quickly that they can successfully escape from the defensive reactions of a host animal (e.g. tail swishing, biting, licking), by which the host tries to drive them away from its body. In shady refuges the wing muscles of tabanids may not function rapidly enough for such an escape. Therefore, tabanids attack host animals usually under sunny conditions. For the same reason, tabanids usually do not fly and attack hosts on overcast days and under rainy or too windy conditions. However, certain small-sized tabanids prefer periods prior to rain, because the lower air temperature and the higher air humidity are advantageous to these insects, whose body has a large surface/volume ratio, and thus they can easily become dehydrated under sunny, dry and windy conditions. (3) The forest vegetation, as a structured background, makes more difficult the visual recognition of host animals.
On the other hand, when looking for water by means of the horizontally polarized water-reflected light, tabanids can quickly fly through shady areas and touch the water surface to drink and/or bath, for example. This water-seeking behaviour of male and female tabanids is quite different from the blood-sucking behaviour of tabanid females. The former can happen under both shady and sunny conditions, while the latter is usually performed in sunshine.
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Typical water-touching behaviour of a polarotactic tabanid fly at a horizontal shiny black test surface in a cemetery in Kiskunhalas (Hungary) on 11 July 2006. The touchdowns of the tabanid were elicited by the strongly and horizontally polarized light reflected from the test surface (copyright holders: Dr. Gábor Horváth and Loránd Horváth) (AVI 25123 kb)
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Horváth, G., Egri, Á., Blahó, M. (2014). Linearly Polarized Light as a Guiding Cue for Water Detection and Host Finding in Tabanid Flies. In: Horváth, G. (eds) Polarized Light and Polarization Vision in Animal Sciences. Springer Series in Vision Research, vol 2. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54718-8_22
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