Data from: Using human vision to detect variation in avian coloration: How bad is it?

Assessing variation in animal coloration is difficult as animals differ in their visual system properties. This has led some to propose that human vision can never be used to evaluate coloration, yet many studies have a long history of relying on human vision. To reconcile these views, we compared the reflectance spectra of preserved avian plumage elements with two measures that are humans biased: RGB values from digital photographs and the corresponding reflectance spectra from a field guide. We measured 73 plumage elements across 14 bird species. The field guide reflectance spectra were drastically different from that of the actual birds, particularly for blue elements. However, principal components analyses on all three data sets indicated remarkably similar data structure. We conclude that human vision can detect much of the variation in coloration in the visible range, providing fodder for subsequent studies in ecology, evolution, behavior, and visual ecology.评估动物体色变异颇具挑战，因不同动物的视觉系统特性存在显著差异。这使得部分学者提出，人类视觉永远无法用于评估动物体色，但诸多研究长期以来均依托人类视觉开展相关工作。为调和这两种相悖的观点，本研究将保存的鸟类羽毛标本的反射光谱，与两种基于人类视觉的测量方法所得结果进行了对比：一是数码照片的RGB（Red Green Blue）值，二是鸟类野外图鉴对应的反射光谱。本研究共测量了14个鸟类物种的73处羽毛样本。鸟类野外图鉴所得的反射光谱与真实鸟类的反射光谱差异显著，尤其在蓝色羽区表现更为突出。不过，对全部三类数据集开展的主成分分析（Principal Components Analysis, PCA）结果显示，其数据结构极为相似。本研究最终得出结论：人类视觉可在可见光范围内检测到体色的大部分变异，这为后续生态学、进化生物学、行为学以及视觉生态学领域的研究提供了重要支撑。