Virtual ophthalmoscopy in barn owls

3D Model

Former WitmerLab doctoral student, Donald G. Cerio, published the second chapter of his dissertation in January 2020 in Vision Research (http://bit.ly/2RLF1So), establishing an “in-silico” technique to model and measure the visual fields of vertebrates. In-silico models are compared to visual fields of birds that had been studied behaviorally by others. This barn owl model is one of the comparisons. Here, we modeled the visual field of Tyto alba using the skull and interpupillary distance of OUVC 10311. Dark red represents contralateral overlap (binocular field), lighter red represents the visual field of a single eye (monocular field), and grey represents the blind area. Yellow dots represent in-vivo data (Knudsen 1982: http://bit.ly/30RJbfJ), showing close correspondence of “virtual ophthalmoscopic” visual fields with those measured by Knudsen. Validation of virtual ophthalmoscopy permits analyzing visual fields in rare, foreign, endangered, or extinct species. A VO cormorant is here: https://skfb.ly/6LwZK.