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Pace of ecology drives the tempo of visual perception across the animal kingdom

Nature Ecology & Evolution (2026)Cite this article

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Abstract

The way an animal perceives its environment is fundamentally shaped by its ecology and evolution. The tempo of perception, the rate at which events can be perceived, varies widely across the animal kingdom and ranges from the rapid motion detection abilities of dragonflies to the sluggish perceptions of giant isopods. Autrum’s hypothesis predicts that a species’ pace of ecology drives this variation, but little is known about this relationship beyond taxon-specific cases. Here we use phylogenetic comparative methods to test the link between the tempo of visual perception and pace of ecology for 237 species, ranging from jellyfish to vertebrates. We show that higher temporal resolution is found in species with fast-paced ecologies associated with the ability to fly and with pursuit predation. We also find that the tempo of perception in ambush predators is mediated by environment context, which is probably related to the ability to act on fine-scale information. Our results highlight how ecology and the environment can shape the tempo of a species’ perceptual experience.

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Fig. 1: Predictions between species’ pace of life and temporal perception.
Fig. 2: Phylogenetic relationship of 208 species included in the analysis.
Fig. 3: The log10 of CFF (Hz) for each of the main habitat types and for each of the foraging modes of life for aquatic species.

Data availability

The CFF dataset and literature review details are available via figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.30556475 (ref. 61).

Code availability

The analysis code is available via figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.30556475 (ref. 61).

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by Trinity College Dublin under the Provost’s Postgraduate Award 2019 scheme, provided to A.L.J., K.J.M. and R.G.O.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Clinton S. Haarlem, Cliodhna Hynes.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Zoology, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Clinton S. Haarlem & Andrew L. Jackson

  2. Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Clinton S. Haarlem, Kevin J. Mitchell & Redmond G. O’Connell

  3. School of Natural Sciences, Ryan institute, University of Galway, Galway, Ireland

    Cliodhna Hynes & Kevin Healy

  4. Smurfit Institute of Genetics, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Kevin J. Mitchell

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  1. Clinton S. Haarlem
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  2. Cliodhna Hynes
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  5. Redmond G. O’Connell
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  6. Kevin Healy
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Contributions

C.S.H., C.H. and K.H. conceived the research. C.S.H. and C.H. collected the data. C.S.H., C.H. and K.H. carried out the statistical analyses. K.H., A.L.J., K.J.M. and R.G.O. supervised the project. C.S.H., C.H. and K.H. wrote the paper with contributions from A.L.J., K.J.M. and R.G.O.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Clinton S. Haarlem.

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Nature Ecology & Evolution thanks Matthew Walsh and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

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Supplementary Tables 1 and 2, Fig. 1 and Methods.

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Supplementary Data 1

Literature review data and screening process.

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Haarlem, C.S., Hynes, C., Jackson, A.L. et al. Pace of ecology drives the tempo of visual perception across the animal kingdom. Nat Ecol Evol (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-026-02994-7

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