Abstract
The visual pigments of peripheral retinula cells in fly eyes have been investigated by microspectrophotometry in vivo. Since flies have a pupil mechanism (Kirschfeld and Franceschini, 1969) which may invalidate the visual pigment measurements, the technique has been applied to the pupil-less mutant chalky of the blowflyCalliphora erythrocephala. It proves that the data acquired previously from wild type blowflies with the in vivo method (Stavenga et al., 1973) are indeed reliable. Blowfly peripheral retinula cells contain a blue-green absorbing rhodopsin. P495, which is photo-interconvertible with a yellow absorbing metarhodopsin M 580. The transformation of rhodopsin into metarhodopsin occurs within milliseconds. Peripheral retinula cells of wild type droneflies contain a rhodopsin P460 and a metarhodopsin M 550. Both blowfly and dronefly belong to the suborder of Brachycera and both have a strongly bathochromic shifted metarhodopsin; yet, the characteristics of their visual pigments appear to be quite distinct.
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