Thoen Hanne H, Chiou Tsyr-Huei, Marshall N Justin
Sensory Neurobiology Group, Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia.
Department of Life Sciences, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan City 70101, Taiwan, ROC.
Integr Comp Biol. 2017 Nov 1;57(5):1117-1129. doi: 10.1093/icb/icx111.
Stomatopods (mantis shrimps) possess one of the most complex eyes in the world with photoreceptors detecting up to 12 different colors. It is not yet understood why stomatopods have almost four times the number of spectral photoreceptors compared with most other animals. It has, however, been suggested that these seemingly redundant photoreceptors could encode color through a new mechanism. Here we compare the spectral sensitivities across five species of stomatopods within the superfamily Gonodactyloidea using intracellular electrophysiological recordings. The results show that the spectral sensitivities across species of stomatopods are remarkably similar apart from some variation in the long-wavelength receptors. We relate these results to spectral sensitivity estimates previously obtained using microspectrophotometry and discuss the variation in the spectral sensitivity maxima (λmax) of the long-wavelength receptors in regard to the previous findings that stomatopods are able to tune their spectral sensitivities according to their respective light environment. We further discuss the similarities of the spectral sensitivities across species of stomatopods in regard to how color information might be processed by their visual systems.
口足目动物（螳螂虾）拥有世界上最复杂的眼睛之一，其光感受器能检测多达12种不同颜色。目前尚不清楚为什么口足目动物的光谱光感受器数量几乎是大多数其他动物的四倍。然而，有人提出这些看似多余的光感受器可能通过一种新机制编码颜色。在这里，我们使用细胞内电生理记录比较了猬虾总科五种口足目动物的光谱敏感性。结果表明，除了长波长感受器存在一些差异外，不同种类口足目动物的光谱敏感性非常相似。我们将这些结果与之前使用显微分光光度法获得的光谱敏感性估计值相关联，并根据之前关于口足目动物能够根据其各自的光环境调整光谱敏感性的发现，讨论长波长感受器光谱敏感性最大值（λmax）的变化。我们还将根据口足目动物视觉系统可能如何处理颜色信息，进一步讨论不同种类口足目动物光谱敏感性的相似性。
