Bat eyes have ultraviolet-sensitive cone photoreceptors
- Mammalian retinae have rod photoreceptors for night vision and cone photoreceptors for daylight and colour vision. For colour discrimination, most mammals possess two cone populations with two visual pigments (opsins) that have absorption maxima at short wavelengths (blue or ultraviolet light) and long wavelengths (green or red light). Microchiropteran bats, which use echolocation to navigate and forage in complete darkness, have long been considered to have pure rod retinae. Here we use opsin immunohistochemistry to show that two phyllostomid microbats, Glossophaga soricina and Carollia perspicillata, possess a significant population of cones and express two cone opsins, a shortwave-sensitive (S) opsin and a longwave-sensitive (L) opsin. A substantial population of cones expresses S opsin exclusively, whereas the other cones mostly coexpress L and S opsin. S opsin gene analysis suggests ultraviolet (UV, wavelengths <400 nm) sensitivity, and corneal electroretinogram recordings reveal an elevated sensitivity to UV light which is mediated by an S cone visual pigment. Therefore bats have retained the ancestral UV tuning of the S cone pigment. We conclude that bats have the prerequisite for daylight vision, dichromatic colour vision, and UV vision. For bats, the UV-sensitive cones may be advantageous for visual orientation at twilight, predator avoidance, and detection of UV-reflecting flowers for those that feed on nectar.
Author: | Brigitte Müller, Martin Glösmann, Leo Peichl, Gabriel C. Knop, Cornelia Hagemann, Josef Ammermüller |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30-68190 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0006390 |
ISSN: | 1932-6203 |
Parent Title (English): | PLoS One |
Document Type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of Publication (online): | 2009/07/28 |
Date of first Publication: | 2009/07/28 |
Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
Release Date: | 2009/08/11 |
Volume: | 4 |
Issue: | (7): e6390 |
Note: | Copyright: (c) 2009 Müller et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
Source: | PLoS ONE 4(7): e6390. ; doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006390 |
HeBIS-PPN: | 21481677X |
Institutes: | Biowissenschaften / Biowissenschaften |
Dewey Decimal Classification: | 5 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik / 59 Tiere (Zoologie) / 590 Tiere (Zoologie) |
Sammlungen: | Sammlung Biologie / Sondersammelgebiets-Volltexte |
Licence (German): | Deutsches Urheberrecht |