Collin Shaun P
School of Animal Biology, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, W.A., Australia.
Brain Behav Evol. 2010;75(3):174-85. doi: 10.1159/000314904. Epub 2010 Aug 20.
Visual ecology or the relationship between the visual system of an animal and its environment has proven to be a crucial research field for establishing general concepts of adaptation, specialization and evolution. The visual neuroscientist is indeed confronted with a plethora of different visual characteristics, each seemingly optimised for each species' ecological niche, but often without a clear understanding of the evolutionary constraints at play. However, before we are able to fully understand the influence(s) of ecology and phylogeny on visual system design in vertebrates, it is first necessary to understand the basic bauplan of key representatives of each taxa. This review examines photoreception in hagfishes, lampreys, cartilaginous fishes and lungfishes with an eye to their ecology using a range of neurobiological methods including anatomy, microspectrophotometry and molecular genetics. These early vertebrates represent critical stages in evolution and surprisingly possess a level of visual complexity that is almost unrivalled in other vertebrates.
视觉生态学，即动物视觉系统与其环境之间的关系，已被证明是建立适应、特化和进化一般概念的关键研究领域。视觉神经科学家确实面临着大量不同的视觉特征，每个特征似乎都针对每个物种的生态位进行了优化，但往往对其中起作用的进化限制缺乏清晰的认识。然而，在我们能够充分理解生态和系统发育对脊椎动物视觉系统设计的影响之前，首先有必要了解每个分类单元关键代表的基本结构蓝图。本综述使用包括解剖学、显微分光光度法和分子遗传学在内的一系列神经生物学方法，着眼于盲鳗、七鳃鳗、软骨鱼和肺鱼的生态学来研究它们的光感受。这些早期脊椎动物代表了进化中的关键阶段，令人惊讶的是，它们拥有的视觉复杂性在其他脊椎动物中几乎无与伦比。
