Abstract
It is perhaps the most extraordinary eye in the living world--so extraordinary that no one believed the biologist who first described it more than a century ago. Now it appears that the tiny owner of this eye uses it to catch invisible prey by detecting polarized light. This suggestion is also likely to be met with disbelief, for the eye belongs to a single-celled organism called Erythropsidinium. Erythropsidinium is a single-celled plankton from a group called dinoflagellates. Many possess chloroplasts, allowing them to get their food by photosynthesis. Others hunt using stinging darts similar to the nematocysts of jellyfish. They sense vibrations when prey comes near, but often have to fire off several darts before they manage to hit it, Fernando Gomez of the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, said.
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