Meeting Abstract
The efficient coding hypothesis posits that organisms’ sensory systems evolve to represent environmental stimuli in a way that is the least metabolically or developmentally costly. One way this can be accomplished is by removing statistical redundancies from sensory inputs to minimize the number of spiking neurons required to represent a stimulus. In the context of visual perception, the mammalian visual cortex is thought to perform these computations. Since visual statistics vary by habitat type, the efficient coding hypothesis would predict that species will evolve to most efficiently encode their species-specific visual habitat. This is a potential route for the diversification of sexually selected signals. Many studies in humans and non-humans have shown preferences for efficiently coded stimuli. If males can mimic the visual statistics of their environment, it could increase their perceived attractiveness to females. Using darters (genus Etheostoma) as a model system, we show quantitative differences in the visual statistics of individual species’ habitats as well as preliminary data on how environment relates to the sparseness of visual displays.
