Photopigment spectral absorbance of Lake Malaŵi cichlids

Jordan, Rebecca; Kellogg, Karen A.; Howe, David; Juanes, Francis; Stauffer, Jay R.; Loew, Ellis R.

doi:10.1111/j.0022-1112.2006.00992.x

Cited by 41 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…In all five species, double cones were similar, usually consisting of one cone cell containing a visual pigment with  max near 480nm and a second cone with a visual pigment with  max near 530nm. In three species, single cone pigments were ultraviolet sensitive, whereas the remaining two species had violetsensitive single cones (Carleton et al, 2000;Jordan et al, 2006;Levine and MacNichol, 1979;Parry et al, 2005). Based on these results, we conclude that rock-dwelling cichlids of Lake Malawi have one of two basic types of colour vision systems that substantially differ only in short wavelength sensitivity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 72%

“…M. heterochromis (previously M. vermivorus) MSP data are from Parry et al (Parry et al, 2005), M. zebra SWS1 and RH2 MSP results are from Carleton et al (Carleton et al, 2000) and Levine and MacNichol (Levine and MacNichol, 1979), respectively, and the remaining MSP data are from Jordan et al (Jordan et al, 2006). All measurements are in nm.…”

Section: Materials and Methods Animalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Each species expresses both RH2B and RH2A and either SWS1 or SWS2B (Table1). The RH2 genes are expressed in double cones and the SWS genes in single cones (Carleton et al, 2000;Jordan et al, 2006;Levine and MacNichol, 1979;Parry et al, 2005). The spectral properties of the visual pigments from Metriaclima zebra have been measured by protein expression and reconstitution in vitro with 11-cis-retinal (Parry et al, 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The fish eye view: are cichlids conspicuous?

Dalton

Cronin

Marshall

et al. 2010

Journal of Experimental Biology

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SUMMARYThe extent of animal colouration is determined by an interplay between natural and sexual selection. Both forces probably shape colouration in the speciose, rock-dwelling cichlids of Lake Malawi. Sexual selection is thought to drive male colouration, overcoming natural selection to create conspicuous colour patterns via female mate choice and male-male competition. However, natural selection should make female cichlids cryptic because they mouthbrood their young. We hypothesize that as a result of both sexual and natural selection, males will have colours that are more conspicuous than female colours. Cichlid spectral sensitivity, especially in the ultraviolet, probably influences how colours appear to them. Here we use simple models of the trichromatic colour space of cichlid visual systems to compare the conspicuousness of male and female nuptial colours of nine species. Conspicuousness of colours was evaluated as their Euclidian distance in colour space from environmental backgrounds and from other colours on the same fish. We find in six of the nine species that breeding males have colours that are statistically more conspicuous than female colours. These colours contrast strongly with each other or with the backgrounds, and they fall within a range of spectra best transmitted in the habitat. Female colour distances were sometimes smaller, suggesting that females of some species are more cryptic than males. Therefore, selection can differentially act to generate male colours that are more conspicuous than those in females. However, in two species, females had colours that were more conspicuous than male colours, suggesting that other selective forces and possibly sexual conflicts are acting in this system. Supplementary material available online at

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 72%

Section: Materials and Methods Animalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The fish eye view: are cichlids conspicuous?

Dalton

Cronin

Marshall

et al. 2010

Journal of Experimental Biology

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“…Obviously, fish with three cone classes would do better than those with two, but humans would still be able to reconstruct the colour The Journal of Experimental Biology 216 (9) signals better. Many coral reef fish were suggested to display two cone classes (Losey et al, 2003) while many African cichlids were suggested to typically display three cone classes (Jordan et al, 2006;Carleton et al, 2008). Our results indicate that using two or three cone classes in these fish would lead to a reduced accuracy of coloursignal reconstruction compared with that of humans.…”

Section: Dimensionality Of Colour Vision In Fishmentioning

confidence: 78%

“…For example, zebrafish (Danio rerio) display seven cone pigments (Vihtelic et al, 1999;Chinen et al, 2003); guppies (Poecilia reticulata) (Archer and Lythgoe, 1990) and killifish (Lucania goodei) (Fuller et al, 2003) display five cone pigments; salmonids (Salmonidae) (Hawryshyn and Hárosi, 1994;Temple et al, 2008) display four to six cone pigments; black bream (Acanthopagrus butcheri) (Shand et al, 2008), goldfish (Carassius auratus) (Hawryshyn and McFarland, 1987;Neumeyer, 1992) and three-spine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) (Rowe et al, 2004) display four cone pigments; coral reef fish display two to four cone pigments Losey et al, 2003); and African cichlids typically display three cone pigments (Jordan et al, 2006;Carleton et al, 2008), although several species were shown to display up to seven pigments (Parry et al, 2005). However, the presence of a large number of cone pigments in the retina may not necessarily suggest the possession of high-dimensional colour vision.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

High complexity of aquatic irradiance may have driven the evolution of four-dimensional colour vision in shallow-water fish

Sabbah

Troje

Gray

et al. 2013

Journal of Experimental Biology

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SUMMARYHumans use three cone photoreceptor classes for colour vision, yet many birds, reptiles and shallow-water fish are tetrachromatic and use four cone classes. Screening pigments, which narrow the spectrum of photoreceptors in birds and diurnal reptiles, render visual systems with four cone classes more efficient. To date, however, the question of tetrachromacy in shallowwater fish that, like humans, lack screening pigments, is still unsolved. We raise the possibility that tetrachromacy in fish has evolved in response to higher spectral complexity of underwater light. We compared the dimensionality of colour vision in humans and fish by examining the spectral complexity of the colour signal reflected from objects into their eyes. We show that fish require four to six cone classes to reconstruct the colour signal of aquatic objects at the accuracy level achieved by humans viewing terrestrial objects. This is because environmental light, which alters the colour signals, is more complex and contains more spectral fluctuations underwater than on land. We further show that fish cones are better suited than human cones to detect these spectral fluctuations, suggesting that the capability of fish cones to detect high-frequency fluctuations in the colour signal confers an advantage. Taken together, we propose that tetrachromacy in fish has evolved to enhance the reconstruction of complex colour signals in shallow aquatic environments. Of course, shallow-water fish might possess fewer than four cone classes; however, this would come with the inevitable loss in accuracy of signal reconstruction. Supplementary material available online at

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Origin and adaptation of green‐sensitive (RH2) pigments in vertebrates

Yokoyama

Jia

2020

FEBS Open Bio

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One of the critical times for the survival of animals is twilight where the most abundant visible lights are between 400 and 550 nanometres (nm). Green‐sensitive RH2 pigments help nonmammalian vertebrate species to better discriminate wavelengths in this blue‐green region. Here, evaluation of the wavelengths of maximal absorption (λmaxs) of genetically engineered RH2 pigments representing 13 critical stages of vertebrate evolution revealed that the RH2 pigment of the most recent common ancestor of vertebrates had a λmax of 503 nm, while the 12 ancestral pigments exhibited an expanded range in λmaxs between 474 and 524 nm, and present‐day RH2 pigments have further expanded the range to ~ 450–530 nm. During vertebrate evolution, eight out of the 16 significant λmax shifts (or |Δλmax| ≥ 10 nm) of RH2 pigments identified were fully explained by the repeated mutations E122Q (twice), Q122E (thrice) and M207L (twice), and A292S (once). Our data indicated that the highly variable λmaxs of teleost RH2 pigments arose from gene duplications followed by accelerated amino acid substitution.

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Photopigment spectral absorbance of Lake Malaŵi cichlids

Cited by 41 publications

References 27 publications

The fish eye view: are cichlids conspicuous?

The fish eye view: are cichlids conspicuous?

High complexity of aquatic irradiance may have driven the evolution of four-dimensional colour vision in shallow-water fish

Origin and adaptation of green‐sensitive (RH2) pigments in vertebrates

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