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Visual pigment in the lens eyes of the box jellyfish Chiropsella bronzie.

Author

Summary, in English

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.

Publishing year

2010

Language

English

Pages

1843-1848

Publication/Series

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Volume

277

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Royal Society Publishing

Topic

  • Zoology

Status

Published

Research group

  • Lund Vision Group

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1471-2954