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Do "White" and "Green" Look the Same to a Bee?

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Abstract

 The hexagon model of color vision predicts that white flowers which reflect ultraviolet light resemble green foliage to a bee's eye, whereas, according to other models of the bee color vision, UV-reflecting white is discriminable from foliage green. The hexagon model is widely used in ecologically and evolutionary oriented literature, and the predicted similarity between white and green has been recently presented as a well established fact (Waser and Chittka 1998). We show that bees detect UV-reflecting white objects presented on a green background, a finding that is in disagreement with the predictions of the hexagon model.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Neurobiologie, Freie Universität Berlin, Königin-Luise-Strasse 28–30, D-14195 Berlin, Germany e-mail: Vorobyev@zedat.fu-berlin.de, Tel.: +49-30-8386441, Fax: +49-30-838-5455, , , , , , DE

    M. Vorobyev, N. Hempel de Ibarra, R. Brandt & M. Giurfa

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  1. M. Vorobyev
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  2. N. Hempel de Ibarra
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  3. R. Brandt
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  4. M. Giurfa
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Received: 22 March 1999 / Accepted in revised form: 2 July 1999

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Vorobyev, M., Hempel de Ibarra, N., Brandt, R. et al. Do "White" and "Green" Look the Same to a Bee?. Naturwissenschaften 86, 592–594 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1007/s001140050680

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s001140050680

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