Osorio D, Vorobyev M
Sussex University, U.K.
Proc Biol Sci. 1996 May 22;263(1370):593-9. doi: 10.1098/rspb.1996.0089.
Most mammals possess two classes of cone, sensitive to short and to long wavelengths of light, but Old World primates (Catarrhini) have distinct medium and long wavelength sensitive classes. The sensitivities of these cones photopigments are alike in all catarrhines with peaks at about 440 nm ('blue'), 533 nm ('green') and 565 nm ('red'). One possible reason for the evolution and conservatism of catarrhine trichromacy is that colour vision is a specialization for finding food. A model of retinal coding of natural spectra, based on discrimination thresholds, is used to examine the usefulness of dichromatic and trichromatic vision for finding fruit, and for identifying fruit and leaves by colour. For identification tasks the dichromat's eye is almost as good as a trichromat's, but the trichromat has an advantage for detecting fruit against a background of leaves.
大多数哺乳动物拥有两类视锥细胞，分别对短波长和长波长的光敏感，但旧世界灵长类动物（狭鼻猴类）具有独特的对中波长和长波长敏感的类别。在所有狭鼻猴类动物中，这些视锥细胞色素的敏感度相似，峰值分别约在440纳米（“蓝色”）、533纳米（“绿色”）和565纳米（“红色”）。狭鼻猴类三色视觉的进化和保守性的一个可能原因是，色觉是寻找食物的一种特殊能力。基于辨别阈值的自然光谱视网膜编码模型，被用于研究双色视觉和三色视觉在寻找果实以及通过颜色识别果实和树叶方面的有用性。对于识别任务，双色视者的眼睛几乎与三色视者的一样好，但在以树叶为背景检测果实时，三色视者具有优势。
