Projects per year
Personal profile
Research interests
Animal vision is often very different from our own. As humans, we can become complacent about the level of visual information around us, assuming that what we see is all that there is. However, the more that we understand about animal vision, the more that we must recognise the different ways that animals view their world. Stepping out of our own sensory realm to try to understand how different species sense their own environments represents an exciting challenge to science and is a field that I find deeply fascinating.
I have spent my career trying to see the world from the perspective of invertebrates. For my PhD I studied the visually guided behaviour of fiddler crabs at the Australian National University by filming and processing natural scenes of signalling fiddler crabs from a crab’s perspective. I then studied the
communication signals of the giant cuttlefish, which uses chromatophore organs to produce moving body patterns. I subsequently moved to the University of Queensland (UQ) to investigate the remarkable visual system of mantis shrimps. These crustaceans possess one of the most complex eyes in the natural world,
with 12 different colour receptors and at least 6 different polarization channels. Here, I contributed to the ground-breaking discovery that these animals use a serial colour vision system unlike any known in nature (Science 343:411-413). In recent years I have become fascinated by why some animals have opted to use
the polarization of light instead of colour. My recent work has shown that some species of crustacean use a sensitive polarization vision system instead of colour. This is a new and exciting field of visual ecology offering multiple avenues of research at the anatomical, physiological, behavioural and ecological scales.
Furthermore, we are now beginning to identify a number of biologically inspired technological applications for these findings in the fields of neuroscience, medicine, material science, sensor design, and image processing.
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Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years
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Jamming visual systems with stripes: the mesmerising hunting display of the broadclub cuttlefish
1/09/22 → 31/08/24
Project: Research
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Active Jamming visual systems with stripes: the mesmerising hunting display of the broadclub cuttlefish
1/08/22 → 1/08/24
Project: Research
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8078 Royal Society URF\R\20102 - Optimisation Of Polarization Vision For Land, Sea And Sky
1/01/21 → 31/12/23
Project: Research
Research output
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Target detection is enhanced by polarization vision in a fiddler crab
How, M. J., Christy, J. H., Temple, S. E., Hemmi, J. M., Justin Marshall, N. & Roberts, N. W., 7 Dec 2015, In: Current Biology. 25, 23, p. 3069-3073 5 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article (Academic Journal) › peer-review
Open AccessFile37 Citations (Scopus)349 Downloads (Pure) -
A different form of color vision in mantis shrimp
Thoen, H. H., How, M. J., Chiou, T-H. & Marshall, J., 24 Jan 2014, In: Science. 343, 6169, p. 411-413 3 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article (Academic Journal) › peer-review
144 Citations (Scopus) -
Polarization distance: a framework for modelling object detection by polarization vision systems
How, M. J. & Marshall, N. J., 7 Feb 2014, In: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 281, 1776, p. 20131632Research output: Contribution to journal › Article (Academic Journal) › peer-review
39 Citations (Scopus)
Datasets
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Vincent Venables et al. Polarization of caustics
How, M. J. (Creator), University of Bristol, 10 Jun 2022
DOI: 10.5523/bris.22e08iua5zm8x2hntpc4i2if1n, http://data.bris.ac.uk/data/dataset/22e08iua5zm8x2hntpc4i2if1n
Dataset
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Temple et al 2020 Octopus pol vision
How, M. J. (Data Manager), University of Bristol, 5 Oct 2020
DOI: 10.5523/bris.1r4kwj2eu0tnq1yj9b9pdeb5bg, http://data.bris.ac.uk/data/dataset/1r4kwj2eu0tnq1yj9b9pdeb5bg
Dataset
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Stereo video files used for 3d tracking horsefly trajectories
How, M. J. (Contributor) & Caro, T. (Contributor), Dryad, 19 Aug 2020
DOI: 10.5061/dryad.18931zctk, http://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.18931zctk and one more link, https://zenodo.org/record/3997527 (show fewer)
Dataset
Prizes
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Konishi Neuroethology Research Award
How, Martin J (Recipient), 1 Aug 2014
Prize: Prizes, Medals, Awards and Grants
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STEM Cafe presentation: the bizarre visual world of the mantis shrimp
Martin J How (Speaker)
1 Oct 2014Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Invited talk
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11th International Congress of Neuroethology
Martin J How (Participant)
28 Jul 2014 → 1 Aug 2014Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in conference