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
Horseflies (Tabanidae) are polarotactic, being attracted to linearly polarized light when searching for water or host animals. Although it is well known that horseflies prefer sunlit dark and strongly polarizing hosts, the reason for this preference is unknown. According to our hypothesis, horseflies use their polarization sensitivity to look for targets with higher degrees of polarization in thei