ON THE RELATION BETWEEN MEASUREMENTS OF INTENSITY DISCRIMINATION AND OF VISUAL ACUITY IN THE HONEY BEE

1. Bees respond by a characteristic reflex to a movement of their visual field. By confining the field to a series of parallel stripes of two alternating different brightnesses it is possible to determine for any width of stripe, at any brightness of one of the two sets of stripes, the brightness of the second at which the bee will first respond to a displacement of the field. Thus the relations between visual acuity and intensity discrimination can be studied. 2. For each width of stripe and visual angle subtended by the stripe the discrimination power of the bee's eye for different brightnesses was studied. For each visual acuity the intensity discrimination varies with illumination in a characteristic, consistent manner. The discrimination is poor at low illuminations; as the intensity of illumination increases the discrimination increases, and reaches a constant level at high illuminations. 3. From the intensity discrimination curves obtained at different visual acuities, visual acuity curves can be reconstructed for different values of ΔI/I. The curves thus obtained are identical in form with the curve found previously by direct test for the relation between visual acuity and illumination.