Why do horseflies need polarization vision for host detection? Polarization helps tabanid flies to select sunlit dark host animals from the dark patches of the visual environment

Spottier Targets Are Less Attractive to Tabanid Flies: On the Tabanid-Repellency of Spotty Fur Patterns

During blood-sucking, female members of the family Tabanidae transmit pathogens of serious diseases and annoy their host animals so strongly that they cannot graze, thus the health of the hosts is drastically reduced. Consequently, a tabanid-resistant coat with appropriate brightness, colour and pattern is advantageous for the host. Spotty coats are widespread among mammals, especially in cattl...

An unexpected advantage of whiteness in horses: the most horsefly-proof horse has a depolarizing white coat.

White horses frequently suffer from malign skin cancer and visual deficiencies owing to their high sensitivity to the ultraviolet solar radiation. Furthermore, in the wild, white horses suffer a larger predation risk than dark individuals because they can more easily be detected. In spite of their greater vulnerability, white horses have been highly appreciated for centuries owing to their natu...

Polarotactic tabanids find striped patterns with brightness and/or polarization modulation least attractive: an advantage of zebra stripes.

The characteristic striped appearance of zebras has provoked much speculation about its function and why the pattern has evolved, but experimental evidence is scarce. Here, we demonstrate that a zebra-striped horse model attracts far fewer horseflies (tabanids) than either homogeneous black, brown, grey or white equivalents. Such biting flies are prevalent across Africa and have considerable fi...

Experimental Study of Tabanid Polarotaxis, Host-Tabanid Interaction and Polarization Tabanid Traps Summary of Ph.D. Thesis

A horizontally polarizing liquid trap enhances the tabanid-capturing efficiency of the classic canopy trap.

Host-seeking female tabanid flies, that need mammalian blood for the development of their eggs, can be captured by the classic canopy trap with an elevated shiny black sphere as a luring visual target. The design of more efficient tabanid traps is important for stock-breeders to control tabanids, since these blood-sucking insects can cause severe problems for livestock, especially for horse- an...