Department of Cell and Organism Biology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
Proc Biol Sci. 2010 Jun 22;277(1689):1843-8. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2009.2248. Epub 2010 Feb 10.
Box jellyfish (Cubomedusae) possess a unique visual system comprising 24 eyes of four morphological types. Moreover, box jellyfish display several visually guided behaviours, including obstacle avoidance and light-shaft attractance. It is largely unknown what kind of visual information box jellyfish use for carrying out these behaviours. Brightness contrast is almost certainly involved, but it is also possible that box jellyfish extract colour information from their surroundings. The possible presence of colour vision in box jellyfish has previously been investigated using behavioural, electrophysiological and immunohistochemical methods. However, the results from these studies are to some degree conflicting and inconclusive. Here, we present results from an investigation into the visual system of the box jellyfish Chiropsella bronzie, using microspectrophotometry and immunohistochemistry. Our results strongly indicate that only one type of visual pigment is present in the upper and lower lens eyes with a peak absorbance of approximately 510 nm. Additionally, the visual pigment appears to undergo bleaching, similar to that of vertebrate visual pigments.
箱形水母（Cubomedusae）拥有独特的视觉系统，由四种形态类型的 24 只眼睛组成。此外，箱形水母还表现出几种视觉引导的行为，包括回避障碍物和光轴吸引。目前还不清楚箱形水母在进行这些行为时使用哪种视觉信息。很明显，亮度对比是必不可少的，但也有可能箱形水母从周围环境中提取颜色信息。以前已经使用行为学、电生理学和免疫组织化学方法研究过箱形水母是否具有色觉。然而，这些研究的结果在某种程度上存在冲突和不明确。在这里，我们使用微分光光度法和免疫组织化学方法，介绍了对箱形水母 Chiropsella bronzie 视觉系统的研究结果。我们的结果强烈表明，在上部和下部透镜眼中只存在一种视觉色素，其峰值吸收约为 510nm。此外，视觉色素似乎会发生漂白，类似于脊椎动物的视觉色素。
