Abstract
In this chapter the occurrence of circularly polarized (CP) light in nature (both in the abiotic and biotic optical environment) is surveyed. We deal with the reason and the possible adaptive significance of CP light reflected from the exocuticle of many beetle species belonging to the Scarabaeoidea. This unique feature of the insect exocuticle seems to have evolved only in scarabaeoids. The imaging polarimetry of circularly polarizing scarab beetles and its results are reviewed. The alleged CP sensitivity in Chrysina gloriosa scarabs is briefly discussed. Finally, the experimental evidence for the lack of CP vision in the scarab species Anomala dubia, A. vitis (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae, Rutelinae), Cetonia aurata, and Protaetia cuprea (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae, Cetoniinae) with circularly polarizing exocuticle is presented.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Brady and Cummings (2010, p. 616) wrote: We used a matte black box to reduce experimental noise associated with phototaxis. A potential problem with using black backgrounds for polarization experiments is the Umow effect, where black backgrounds reflect higher percentages of polarized light than white backgrounds, increasing the chance of spurious polarized signals (Horváth and Varjú 2004 ). These effects are not likely to significantly affect our results because of our box configuration. Reflected light off of the sides of the box will be at angles that will have minimal polarized Fresnel reflection relative to the test subject. Also, the light from the stimulus will be several orders of magnitude brighter than light reflected off the sides of the box.
References
Blahó M, Egri Á, Hegedüs R, Jósvai J, Tóth M, Kertész K, Biró LP, Kriska G, Horváth G (2012) No evidence for behavioral responses to circularly polarized light in four scarab beetle species with circularly polarizing exocuticle. Physiol Behav 105: 1067–1075 + electronic supplement
Brady P, Cummings M (2010) Differential response to circularly polarized light by the jewel scarab beetle Chrysina gloriosa. Am Nat 175:614–620
Caveney S (1971) Cuticle reflectivity and optical activity in scarab beetles: the role of uric acid. Proc R Soc Lond B 178:205–225
Chiou TH, Kleinlogel S, Cronin T, Caldwell R, Loeffler B, Siddiqi A, Goldizen A, Marshall J (2008) Circular polarization vision in a stomatopod crustacean. Curr Biol 18:429–434
Collett E (1993) Polarized light—fundamentals and applications. Marcel Dekker, New York
Coulson KL (1974) The polarization of light in the environment. In: Gehrels T (ed) Planets, stars and nebulae studied with photopolarimetry. University of Arizona Press, Tucson, AZ, pp 444–471
Gaubert P (1924) Sur la polarisation circulaire de la lumière réfléchie par les Insectes. Compte rendu hebdomadaire des séances de l’Académie des sciences de Paris 179:1148–1150
Gokan N, Meyer-Rochow VB (2000) Morphological comparisons of compound eyes in Scarabaeoidea (Coleoptera) related to the beetles’ daily activity maxima and phylogenetic positions. J Agric Sci 45:15–61
Goldstein DH (2006) Polarization properties of Scarabaeidae. Appl Opt 45:7944–7950
Haidinger W (1844) Über das direkte Erkennen des polarisierten Lichts und der Lage der Polarisationsebene. Annalen der Physik und Chemie 63:29–39
Hannemann D, Raschke E (1974) Measurements of the elliptical polarization of sky radiation: preliminary results. In: Gehrels T (ed) Planets, stars and nebulae studied with photopolarimetry. University of Arizona Press, Tucson, AZ, pp 510–513
Hegedüs R, Szél G, Horváth G (2006) Imaging polarimetry of the circularly polarizing cuticle of scarab beetles (Coleoptera: Rutelidae, Cetoniidae). Vis Res 46:2786–2797
Hill DS (2009) Pests of crops in warmer climates and their control. Springer, Heidelberg
Hitzfelder SJ, Plass GN, Kattawar GW (1976) Radiation in the earth’s atmosphere: its radiance, polarization, and ellipticity. Appl Opt 15:2489–2500
Horváth G, Varjú D (2004) Polarized light in animal vision—polarization patterns in nature. Springer, Heidelberg
Ivanoff A, Waterman TH (1958) Elliptical polarization of submarine illumination. J Mar Res 16:255–282
Jewell SA, Vukusic P, Roberts NW (2007) Circularly polarized colour reflection from helicoidal structures in the beetle Plusiotis boucardi. New J Phys 9: Art. No. 99
Kattawar GW (1994) A search for circular polarization in nature. Opt Photonics News Sept 1994:42–43
Kleinlogel S, White AG (2008) The secret world of shrimps: polarisation vision at its best. PLoS One 3(5):1–8, e2190. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002190
Können GP (1985) Polarized light in nature. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Miao J, Wu YQ, Li KB, Jiang YL, Gong ZJ, Duan Y, Li T (2014) Evidence for visually mediated signal in mate choice in the scarab beetle Anomala corpulenta. J Insect Behav (in press)
Michelson AA (1911) On metallic colouring in birds and insects. Philos Mag 21:554–567
Neville AC, Caveney S (1969) Scarabaeid beetle exocuticle as an optical analogue of cholesteric liquid crystals. Biol Rev 44:531–562
Neville AC, Luke BM (1971) Form optical activity in crustacean cuticle. J Insect Physiol 17:519–526
Pye JD (2010a) The distribution of circularly polarized light reflection in the Scarabaeoidea (Coleoptera). Biol J Linn Soc 100:585–596
Pye JD (2010b) Left-handed beetles. Phys World August 2010: 52
Robinson C (1966) The cholesteric phase in polypeptide solutions and biological structures. Mol Cryst 1:467–494
Schmera D, Tóth M, Subchev M, Sredkov I, Szarukán I, Jermy T, Szentesi Á (2004) Importance of visual and chemical cues in the development of an attractant trap for Epicometis (Tropinota) hirta Poda (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae). Crop Prot 23:939–944
Shashar N, Rutledge PS, Cronin TW (1996) Polarization vision in cuttlefish: a concealed communication channel? J Exp Biol 199:2077–2084
Shurcliff WA (1955) Haidinger’s brushes and circularly polarized light. J Opt Soc Am 45:399
Sweeney A, Jiggins C, Johnsen S (2003) Polarized light as a butterfly mating signal. Nature 423:31–32
Tóth M, Leal WL, Szarukán I, Lesznyák M, Szőcs G (1994) 2-(E)-Nonen-1-ol: male attractant for chafers Anomala vitis Fabr. and A. dubia Scop. (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae). J Chem Ecol 20:2481–2487
Vuts J, Imrei Z, Tóth M (2010) New co-attractants synergizing attraction of Cetonia aurata aurata and Potosia cuprea to the known floral attractant. Zeitschrift für angewandte Entomologie 134:9–15
Warrant EJ (2010) Polarisation vision: beetles see circularly polarised light. Curr Biol 20(14):R610–R612
Waterman TH (1954) Polarization patterns in submarine illumination. Science 120:927–932
Wolken JJ (1995) Light detectors, photoreceptors, and imaging systems in nature. Chapter 13. Polarized light in nature: detection by animals. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Wolstencroft RD (1974) The circular polarization of light reflected from certain optically active surfaces. In: Gehrels T (ed) Planets, stars and nebulae studied with photopolarimetry. The University of Arizona Press, Tucson, AZ, pp 495–499
Wynberg H, Meijer EW, Hummelen JC, Dekkers HPJM, Schippers PH, Carlson AD (1980) Circular polarization observed in bioluminescence. Nature 286:641–642
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
1 Electronic Supplementary Material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Colour Version of Fig. 6.1
(a) Portrait of the Nobel laureate American physicist, Albert Abraham Michelson (1852–1931), who discovered in 1911 that the light reflected from the exocuticle of the golden scarab beetle Chrysina resplendens is left-circularly polarized. (b) Chrysina resplendens. (c) The structure of the left-circularly polarizing exocuticle of scarabs is optically analogous to that of the cholesteric liquid crystals composed of layers in which the chitin fibres are ordered more or less parallel to each other, and the fibre direction turns continuously and evenly from layer to layer (the fibres of which have the same colour here) with a constant pitch. Due to this helicoidal structure, a white unpolarized incident light becomes green LC polarized after reflection, while the transmitted light is a combination of violet LCP and white RCP light (CDR 663 kb)
Supplementary Fig. 6.1
Linear and circular polarization patterns of the scarab beetle Chrysophora chrysochlora measured by imaging polarimetry in the red (650 nm), green (550 nm) and blue (450 nm) ranges of the spectrum. The upper row shows the appearance through an LC and an RC polarizer and without a polarizer. Below a–c, the panels are sorted by wavelength (650, 550, 450 nm). Rows d–f, g–i, j–l, m–o display the intensity I, degree of linear polarization dL, angle of polarization α (measured clockwise from the vertical) and degree of circular polarization dc. The illumination of the beetle was omnidirectional due to two circular light tubes. The circular arrows show the handedness of circularly polarized light transmitted by the polarizers (CDR 2357 kb)
Supplementary Fig. 6.2
As Supplementary Fig. 6.1 from the side (CDR 1406 kb)
Supplementary Fig. 6.3
As Supplementary Fig. 6.1 for Chrysina resplendens. The beetle was illuminated by diffuse ambient light in order to avoid the disturbing mirror image of the circular light tubes. The inset in the top right corner shows the portrait of the Nobel laureate American physicist, Albert Abraham Michelson (1852–1931), who discovered in 1911 that the light reflected from the cuticle of Chrysina resplendens is LC polarized (CDR 3213 kb)
Supplementary Fig. 6.4
As Supplementary Fig. 6.3 from the side (CDR 1394 kb)
Supplementary Fig. 6.5
As Supplementary Fig. 6.1 for the scarab beetle Chrysina macropus (CDR 3606 kb)
Supplementary Fig. 6.6
As Supplementary Fig. 6.5 from the side (CDR 3352 kb)
Supplementary Fig. 6.7
As Supplementary Fig. 6.1 for the scarab beetle Calomacraspis haroldi (CDR 1230 kb)
Supplementary Fig. 6.8
As Supplementary Fig. 6.1 for the scarab beetle Ischiopsopha lucivorax (CDR 4164 kb)
Supplementary Fig. 6.9
As Supplementary Fig. 6.1 for a tropical flower scarab beetle (CDR 4041 kb)
Supplementary Fig. 6.10
As Supplementary Fig. 6.1 for the scarab beetle Protaetia jousselini (CDR 2295 kb)
Supplementary Fig. 6.11
Photographs of scarab beetles Protaetia cuprea, Anomala vitis and Anomala dubia (row 1: living beetles feeding on apple slices in a plastic container, rows 2 and 3: dead beetles) taken without a polarizer and through an LC and an RC polarizer. The circular arrows show the handedness of CP light transmitted by the polarizers [after Fig. 1 on page 1068 of Blahó et al. (2012)] (CDR 3180 kb)
Supplementary Fig. 6.14
(a–f) Structure of the choice box used in experiment 2 of Blahó et al. (2012). (a) Choice box in its normal position with the release cylinder in the centre. (b–c) Choice box with its upside down showing the 6 sectors and 12 windows from a tilted (b) and vertical (c) direction of view. (d–f) The two windows of a sector with an RC and an LC polarizer photographed without a polarizer (d), and through an RC polarizer (e) and an LC polarizer (f). (g–i) The three colour pictures used in the choice box [after Supplementary Fig. S3 of Blahó et al. (2012)] (CDR 5820 kb)
Supplementary Fig. 6.15
(a) A CSALOMON® VARb3 funnel trap used by Blahó et al. (2012) in their experiment 4, in which the dead beetles were glued to the inside of the transparent upper funnel. (b–d) Photographs of the dead scarabs (Anomala vitis, A. dubia, Cetonia aurata) glued to the trap [after Supplementary Fig. S6 of Blahó et al. (2012)] (CDR 12960 kb)
Supplementary Fig. 6.16
Structure of a sector of the choice box (with its upside down) used in experiment 5 of Blahó et al. (2012) and photographed without a polarizer (a) and through a linear polarizer, the transmission direction of which is shown by the black doubleheaded arrow. Seen from the box, in each sector one of the two windows transmitted totally linearly polarized light (whose direction of polarization was 45° from the horizontal and is shown here by the white double-headed arrow), and the other window transmitted left-circularly polarized light [after Supplementary Fig. S7 of Blahó et al. (2012)] (CDR 4960 kb)
Supplementary Fig. 6.17
Structure of the choice box used in the pilot experiments and experiment 6 of Blahó et al. (2012). (a) Photograph of the choice box. Seen from the box, one of the windows transmitted left-circularly polarized light and the other window transmitted unpolarized light. (b) The choice box in a dark room illuminated by unpolarized light and photographed with its upside down without a polarizer. (c) As b but here photographed through a right-circular polarizer [after Supplementary Fig. S8 of Blahó et al. (2012)] (CDR 6677 kb)
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Horváth, G., Blahó, M., Egri, Á., Hegedüs, R., Szél, G. (2014). Circular Polarization Vision of Scarab Beetles. 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_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54718-8_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-54717-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-54718-8
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)