"It's been blowing us away for years how complex the stomatopod visual system is," Caldwell said. "There's no question this is the most complex eye in the animal kingdom. It has the same capability in the ultraviolet alone that we have in normal light. The mystery is, why do they need such a complex eye?"
One simple explanation is that these animals need complex signaling because they're so dangerous. Mantis shrimp spear or club their prey and have been known to break aquarium glass with their heavy, calcified clubs. They can easily kill an opponent with a single, well-placed blow, Caldwell said.
Another explanation is that, because they have small brains, complex visual processing must be done in the eye's receptor, whereas our much larger brain is able to integrate and process three color signals into a rainbow of colors.
But these explanations are not entirely convincing, Caldwell said.
"Based on our recent work, these animals have a lot more to see than we thought," Caldwell said. "Their signals are just a lot more complex than we ever imagined, because they have these detection systems that we don't have. They have polarized light signals we can't see, and now we find they have fluorescence signals we barely see. In fact, we show that one set of receptors in this stomatopod eye is specifically tuned to look at that yellow-green wavelength and pick out that signal."
Mazel accidentally discovered the fl
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Contact: Robert Sanders
rls@pa.urel.berkeley.edu
510-643-6998
University of California - Berkeley
14-Nov-2003