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Scientists Discover That Puffin Beaks Are Fluorescent (www.cbc.ca)
A scientist in England discovered that the bills of Atlantic puffins glow like freshly cracked glow sticks when under a UV light. CBC.ca reports of how ornithologist Jamie Dunning stumbled upon the discovery: Dunning normally works with twites, another type of bird, but he had been wondering if puffins had Day-Glo beaks for a while, since crested auklets -- seabirds in the same family -- also have light-up bills. So one January day, while having a "troubling" time in the lab, he threw off the lights and shone a UV light on a puffin carcass. "What happened was quite impressive, really," he said. The two yellow ridges on the puffin's bill -- called the lamella and the cere -- lit up like a firefly. And it's real fluorescence, Dunning emphasizes: something about those parts of the puffin bill is allowing that UV light to be absorbed and re-emitted as a bright glowing light.
The fact some birds have this quality and some birds don't indicates the fluorescence certainly has some use for the puffins, Dunning said, but he's not sure what that use might be. "The bill of a puffin is forged by generations, hundreds and thousands of years, of sexual selection. There's a lot going on there. That's why it's so colorful and pretty." But the radiant color is almost certainly not being used as a headlight, he said. He said whatever's making the beak glow is reacting with the UV light waves, and those light waves aren't around in the dark.
The fact some birds have this quality and some birds don't indicates the fluorescence certainly has some use for the puffins, Dunning said, but he's not sure what that use might be. "The bill of a puffin is forged by generations, hundreds and thousands of years, of sexual selection. There's a lot going on there. That's why it's so colorful and pretty." But the radiant color is almost certainly not being used as a headlight, he said. He said whatever's making the beak glow is reacting with the UV light waves, and those light waves aren't around in the dark.
This is slightly different than tetrachromacy. Birds can see into the UV range. But the puffins' beaks are fluorescing in the visible (to humans) spectrum. UV reflectivity is a different thing and that would result in patterns not visible to humans being perceived by birds. But that wouldn't be testable using the methods proposed in TFA. You'd still need a camera with a UV sensor to record UV reflective patterns.
Since this fluorescent effect only presents itself under low visible light/high UV light conditions, the question is: where does one find such an environment? The answer might be; under water. Short wavelength light penetrates water to a greater extent than longer (redder) light. And since puffins feed under water, this effect might be useful to attract prey.
Have gnu, will travel.
"The bill of a puffin is forged by generations, hundreds and thousands of years, of sexual selection. There's a lot going on there. That's why it's so colorful and pretty." But the radiant color is almost certainly not being used as a headlight, he said. He said whatever's making the beak glow is reacting with the UV light waves, and those light waves aren't around in the dark.
Your laundry detergent, highlighters, even paint on coke cans all have UV dyes in them. The reason is not because humans can see in UV or because they need these objects to glow in the dark. The dyes make them appear artificially bright during the day by emitting the converted UV light in addition to the reflected visible light. In as much as brightly colored beaks are important for sexual selection, the fluorescent pigments are part of the trick.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
nightclubs/discos
Same motivation at work here: attracting prey.
Have gnu, will travel.