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. 2013 Oct;86(4):685-696.
doi: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2013.06.018.

Metabolic rate and body size are linked with perception of temporal information

Kevin Healy  1 , Luke McNally, Graeme D Ruxton, Natalie Cooper, Andrew L Jackson
Affiliations

Metabolic rate and body size are linked with perception of temporal information

Kevin Healy et al. Anim Behav. 2013 Oct.

Abstract

Body size and metabolic rate both fundamentally constrain how species interact with their environment, and hence ultimately affect their niche. While many mechanisms leading to these constraints have been explored, their effects on the resolution at which temporal information is perceived have been largely overlooked. The visual system acts as a gateway to the dynamic environment and the relative resolution at which organisms are able to acquire and process visual information is likely to restrict their ability to interact with events around them. As both smaller size and higher metabolic rates should facilitate rapid behavioural responses, we hypothesized that these traits would favour perception of temporal change over finer timescales. Using critical flicker fusion frequency, the lowest frequency of flashing at which a flickering light source is perceived as constant, as a measure of the maximum rate of temporal information processing in the visual system, we carried out a phylogenetic comparative analysis of a wide range of vertebrates that supported this hypothesis. Our results have implications for the evolution of signalling systems and predator-prey interactions, and, combined with the strong influence that both body mass and metabolism have on a species' ecological niche, suggest that time perception may constitute an important and overlooked dimension of niche differentiation.

Keywords: comparative analysis; critical flicker fusion; evolutionary ecology; predator–prey; temporal resolution.

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Figures

Figure A1
Figure A1
Species and phylogenetic relationship used in comparative analysis. Scale bar represent 50 million years. See Methods for details.
Figure A2
Figure A2
The effect of body mass (presented on log scale), light levels and log temperature-corrected mass-specific resting metabolic rate (qWg) on critical flicker fusion frequency (CFF). The minimal adequate model (Results) indicates CFF increases with log10 qWg (13.24 ± 4.08) but decreases with body mass (−0.0002 ± 0.00004). Low light levels (blue) are associated with low CFF values (−41.10 ± 4.96) in comparison to high light levels (red). Residual values for each species are shown for different light levels with stems connecting them to the model surface.
Figure A3
Figure A3
Residuals for optimum and suboptimum data quality taken from model 1 in main analysis. Box plot shows median (line), quartiles (box limits), 5th and 95th percentiles (error bars) and outliers (open circles).
Figure A4
Figure A4
Plot of Fig. 1 with data quality represented with methodologically optimum (O) and methodologically suboptimum (S) data. Slopes corrected to represent the intercepts of each explanatory variable at the median value of (a) log10(qWg) and (b) log10 (Mg).
Figure 1
Figure 1
The ability of an organism to track a moving object depends on the time integral over which the individual can obtain its information. This is determined by its ability to resolve temporal information. In cases where an animal, such as a ground squirrel, displays complex movement (a), conspecifics may perceive the individual as moving according to a first-order integral of its actual movement owing to its high temporal resolution abilities (b). However a species with lower temporal resolution abilities, such as a short-eared owl, may perceive the motion as an even higher order derivative of the actual motion, meaning information of prey motion at finer temporal scales is not available to it (c).
Figure 2
Figure 2
The effect of (a) body mass (presented on log10 scale) and (b) log10 temperature-corrected mass-specific resting metabolic rate (qWg) on critical flicker fusion frequency (CFF) while controlled for light levels. The minimal adequate model (Results) indicates CFF increases with log10 qWg (13.24 ± 4.08) but decreases with body mass (−0.0002 ± 0.00004). Low light levels are associated with low CFF values (−41.10 ± 4.96) in comparison to high light levels. Figure adjusted to display the intercept at the median value of the unrepresented axis.
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