Looking on the bright side of a long snowy winter
Greetings from Minnesota! That’s right, Toni and I took a trip to the tundra! Why? Well we’re visiting some friends up here in Dr. Allen Mensinger’s lab at the University of Minnesota at Duluth. They’re helping Julie check our vision using this technique called electroretinograms (but more on that in a minute!). If you haven’t already noticed, I’m pretty awesome and brightly colored. And I do this little dance for Toni when I’m trying to get her to spawn with me. Like a lot of animals, we primarily use visual signals during reproduction. When I’m ready to mate, or around Toni when she’s ready to mate, I produce A LOT more of these visual signals (check out some of them in this picture!). But what my humans are interested in testing is if Toni’s ability to detect my dance and colors changes with her reproductive state. We already know she can probably hear me better when she’s ready to mate (read about that here), but maybe she can see me better too!! How cool would that be?!?! They’ve...