Absence of eye shine and tapetum in the heterogeneous eye of Anthocharis butterflies (Pieridae)

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SUMMARYHere we report the remarkable anatomy of the eye of the Eastern Pale Clouded yellow butterfly, Colias erate. An ommatidium of C. erate bears nine photoreceptors, R1-9, which together form a tiered and fused rhabdom. The distal tier of the rhabdom consists of the rhabdomeral microvilli of R1-4 photoreceptors, R5-8 photoreceptors contribute the proximal tier, and the R9 photoreceptor adds a few microvilli at the base. In transverse sections, four spots of red pigment surrounding the rhabdom are evident in the ventral region of the eye. The red pigment acts as a strong red filter for the proximal photoreceptors. The arrangement of the pigment spots distinguishes the ommatidia into three types: trapezoidal (type I), square (type II) and rectangular (type III). In all types of ommatidia, the distal and the proximal tiers of the rhabdom are divided by a strong constriction, clearly to enhance the filtering effect of the red pigment. The ommatidial heterogeneity can also be observed by optical measurements. The eye shine, resulting from tapetal reflections, peaks in type I ommatidia at 660 nm, and in type II and III ommatidia at 730 nm. The far-redpeaking eye shine indicates that C. erate has far-red-sensitive photoreceptors. Type I ommatidia fluoresce under violet excitation, implying the presence of a violet-absorbing pigment that acts as a short-wavelength filter.

Section: Possible Variability Of Short-wavelength Receptorssupporting

confidence: 69%

“…Some of the butterfly species studied so far have fluorescing ommatidia (Arikawa et al, 1999a;Arikawa et al, 2005;Takemura et al, 2007). This also appears to be the case for C. erate.…”

Section: Ommatidial Fluorescence Tapetal Reflection and Pigmentmentioning

confidence: 68%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Rhabdom constriction enhances filtering by the red screening pigment in the eye of the Eastern Pale Clouded yellow butterfly, Colias erate(Pieridae)

Arikawa

Pirih

Stavenga

2009

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“…Any unabsorbed light leaving the eye is seen as eye-shine. All butterfly eyes examined so far reflect eye-shine (Miller and Bernard, 1968;Bernard and Miller, 1970;Stavenga, 2002), except for those in the most basal family, the Papilionidae (Miller, 1979) and in the pierid genus, Anthocharis (Takemura et al, 2007). Animals were immobilized with wax and placed with the centre of curvature of one eye in the centre of a goniometer.…”

Section: Eye-shine Photographsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The lycaenid butterfly Polyommatus icarus uses a duplicated blue opsin to see green

Sison-Mangus

Briscoe

Zaccardi

et al. 2008

SUMMARYThe functional significance of gene duplication is rarely addressed at the level of animal behavior. Butterflies are excellent models in this regard because they can be trained and the use of their opsin-based visual pigments in color vision can be assessed. In the present study, we demonstrate that the lycaenid Polyommatus icarus uses its duplicate blue (B2) opsin, BRh2, in conjunction with its long-wavelength (LW) opsin, LWRh, to see color in the green part of the light spectrum extending up to 560·nm. This is in contrast to butterflies in the genus Papilio, which use duplicate LW opsins to discriminate colors in the long-wavelength range. We also found that P. icarus has a heterogeneously expressed red filtering pigment and red-reflecting ommatidia in the ventral eye region. In behavioural tests, the butterflies could not discriminate colors in the red range (570-640·nm). This finding is significant because we have previously found that the nymphalid butterfly Heliconius erato has filter-pigment mediated color vision in the long wavelength range. Our results suggest that lateral filtering pigments may not always influence color vision in insects.Supplementary material available online at

“…When observed with an epi-illumination microscope, the eyes of most butterflies (with the exception of all papilionids and some pierids) exhibit a striking eyeshine, due to the presence of a tracheal tapetum at the bottom of the rhabdom (Fig.1) (Arikawa and Stavenga, 1997;Bernard and Miller, 1970;Takemura et al, 2007). The tapetum reflects light that has escaped absorption while propagating through the rhabdom.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex-specific retinal pigmentation results in sexually dimorphic long-wavelength-sensitive photoreceptors in the Eastern Pale Clouded Yellow butterfly,Colias erate

Ogawa

Kinoshita

Stavenga

et al. 2013

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SUMMARYThe compound eyes of the eastern pale clouded yellow butterfly, Colias erate, contain three types of ommatidia (I, II and III), identifiable by the differing arrangements of pigment clusters around the rhabdoms. The pigment color is red in all ommatidial types except for type II ommatidia of females, where the pigment is orange. Intracellular recordings demonstrated that the spectral sensitivities of the proximal photoreceptors (R5-8) of all ommatidia in both sexes are strongly tuned by the perirhabdomal pigments. These pigments act as long-pass filters, shifting the peak sensitivities into the wavelength range above 600nm. Due to the sex-specific pigments in type II ommatidia, the spectral sensitivities of the R5-8 photoreceptors of females peaked at 620nm while those in males peaked at 660nm. The measured spectral sensitivities could be well reproduced by an optical model assuming a long-wavelength-absorbing visual pigment with peak absorbance at 565nm. Whereas the sexual dimorphism was unequivocally demonstrated for the ventral eye region, dimorphism in the dorsal region was not found. Presumably the ventral region is adapted for sexual behaviors such as courtship and oviposition.