Abstract
Larval stomatopod eyes appear to be much simpler versions of adult compound eyes, lacking most of the visual pigment diversity and photoreceptor specializations. Our understanding of the visual pigment diversity of larval stomatopods, however, is based on four species, which severely limits our understanding of stomatopod eye ontogeny. To investigate several poorly understood aspects of stomatopod larval eye function, we tested two hypotheses surrounding the spectral absorption of larval visual pigments. First, we examined a broad range of species to determine if stomatopod larvae generally express a single, spectral class of photoreceptor. Using microspectrophotometry (MSP) on larvae captured in the field, we found data which further support this long-standing hypothesis. MSP was also used to test whether larval species from the same geographical region express visual pigments with similar absorption spectra. Interestingly, despite occupation of the same geographical location, we did not find evidence to support our second hypothesis. Rather, there was significant variation in visual pigment absorption spectra among sympatric species. These data are important to further our understanding of larval photoreceptor spectral diversity, which is beneficial to ongoing investigations into the ontogeny, physiology, and molecular evolution of stomatopod eyes.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00359-015-1063-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Stomatopods are known for the elaborate visual systems found in adults of many species
Visual pigment absorption spectra were measured from eight species of stomatopod larvae (Table 1; Figs. 2, 3)
In accordance with previous findings (Cronin et al 1995; Jutte et al 1998; Cronin and Jinks 2001), the data presented in this study support the hypothesis that a single spectral class of photoreceptor is expressed in larval stomatopod eyes (Table 1)
Summary
Stomatopods are known for the elaborate visual systems found in adults of many species. Adult stomatopod eyes have the largest reported photoreceptor diversity in a single eye, which in some species can include up to 16 classes of photoreceptors (Marshall et al 1991a) These include specialized receptor classes for detecting a wide spectral range of visible (Cronin and Marshall 1989; Marshall et al 1991a, b; Cronin et al 1993; Cronin et al 1994, Marshall et al 1996; Chiao et al 2000a) and ultraviolet (Marshall and Oberwinkler 1999; Bok et al 2014) light, as well as detecting linearly and circularly polarized light (Marshall et al 1991a; Marshall et al 1999; Chiou et al 2008; for review of stomatopod vision see Cronin et al 2014). Throughout the larval progression, which depending on the species can include up to 11 pelagic stages,
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