Spectral absorption of visual pigments in stomatopod larval photoreceptors

• DOI: 10.1007/s00359-015-1063-y
• Publication Date: 2016-01-14T20:42:22Z
• Authors: Kathryn D. Feller; Thomas W. Cronin
• Keywords: Visual pigments

Larval stomatopod eyes appear to be much simpler versions of adult compound eyes, lacking most the visual pigment diversity and photoreceptor specializations. Our understanding larval stomatopods, however, is based on four species, which severely limits our eye ontogeny. To investigate several poorly understood aspects function, we tested two hypotheses surrounding spectral absorption pigments. First, examined a broad range species determine if larvae generally express single, class photoreceptor. Using microspectrophotometry (MSP) captured in field, found data further support this long-standing hypothesis. MSP was also used test whether from same geographical region pigments with similar spectra. Interestingly, despite occupation location, did not find evidence second Rather, there significant variation spectra among sympatric species. These are important diversity, beneficial ongoing investigations into ontogeny, physiology, molecular evolution eyes.