Animal Eyes

Description

• Authoritative: the authors have themselves made many of the recent discoveries in animal optics.
• Clearly written for a non-specialist readership
• Many new and striking illustrations
• Diverse readership from biologists to physicists

Animal Eyes aims to provide a comprehensive account of all known types of eye. It takes the diversity of optical mechanisms as a framework, but many other aspects of the structure and function of eyes are examined. Visual ecology, for example, the way that eyes are specifically adapted to the lifestyles of the animals that bear them, is another important theme. The 'design philosophy' of eyes is explored, too: what are the physical constraints on the way that an eye performs its functions, and how are these addressed by the different types of eye? Early and closing chapters look at the properties of light critical to vision, and factors in eye adaptation like spatial resolution, sensitivity, and movement, while the central sections assess the capabilities of a wide variety of eye types.

Contents

1. The origin of vision
2. Light and vision
3. What makes a good eye?
4. Aquatic eyes: the evolution of the lens
5. Lens eyes on land
6. Mirrors in animals
7. Apposition compound eyes
8. Superposition eyes
9. Movements of the eyes
Principle symbols used in the text
References
Index