International Collaboration on Color Vision in Arthropods

这个国际研究项目的具体目的是了解蝴蝶颜色视觉系统的基本设计。以下是本项目的研究结果。蝶类小眼不均一性的一般表现我们发现日本黄凤蝶的小眼在光谱上是不均一的。我们确定了至少三种类型的小眼，这是随机分布在视网膜。不同类型小眼的随机分布可能与它们的色觉有关。因此，我们利用落射光金属显微镜观察了主要分布在台湾的五十多种蝴蝶的绒毡层反射。在所有观察到的物种中，绒毡层反射的颜色和/或强度似乎是异质小眼之间。这清楚地表明，小眼的异质性和随机分布是蝴蝶复眼的一般性质。根据获得的数据，我们 ...更多信息 我们精心挑选了几个物种，将进行更详细的研究，我们开始了一些试点实验。生理和分子生物学研究的光谱敏感性的凤蝶在凤蝶视网膜，我们以前确定了一个紫色的受体，其光谱敏感功能是相当狭窄的相比，其他光谱受体。在这里，我们证明了紫色受体始终存在于小眼在紫外落射光照射下发出强烈荧光。荧光是由于3OH羟基视黄醇，这是作为紫外线吸收过滤器。紫色受体也被证明含有吸收紫外线的视觉色素。这为我们先前的假设提供了分子生物学支持，即紫色受体是由吸收紫外线的视觉色素经3-OH羟基视黄醇过滤而产生的。此外，我们发现了一种新型的光谱受体，其光谱灵敏度在可见光区域具有非常宽的（半带宽为230 nm）灵敏度光谱，并且完全缺乏在UV波长区域的灵敏度。由于这种细胞具有异常广泛的敏感性，我们将其称为A细胞。还确定了A细胞的光谱来源。少

The specific aim of this international research project was to understand the basic design of color vision system of butterflies. Below are the results obtained from this project.General appearance of ommatidial heterogeneity in butterfliesWe have discovered that the ommatidia of the Japanese yellow swallowtail butterfly, Papilio xuthus are spectrally heterogeneous. We identified at least three types of ommatidia, which are randomly distributed over the retina. The random distribution of different types of ommatidia may be related to their color vision. We therefore observed the tapetal reflection of more than 50 butterfly species, occurring mainly in Taiwan, by using epi-illumination metal microscope. In all species observed, the color and/or intensity of tapetal reflection appeared to be heterogeneous among ommatidia. This clearly indicates that the ommatidial heterogeneity and their random distribution is a general property of butterfly compound eyes. Based on the data obtained, we … More carefully selected several species with which more detailed research will be carried out, and we initiated some pilot experiments.Physiological and molecular biological study of the spectral sensitivities of Papilio photoreceptorIn the Papilio retina, we previously identified a violet receptor whose spectral sensitivity function is considerably narrower compared to other spectral receptors. Here we demonstrated that the violet receptors reside always in the ommatidia emitting strong fluorescence under UV epi-illumination. The fluorescence is due to 3OH hydroxyretinol, which is acting as an UV-absorbing filter. The violet receptors were also shown to contain UV-absorbing visual pigment. This gives a molecular biological support to our previous hypothesis that the violet receptors are produced by UV absorbing visual pigment filtered by the 3-OH hydroxyretinol. Also, we found a novel type of spectral receptor whose spectral sensitivity has a very broad (230 nm in half-bandwidth) sensitivity spectrum in the visible region and completely lacks the sensitivity in the UV wavelength region. Because of the abnormally-broad sensitivity, we termed the cell as A-cell. The spectral origin of the A-cell was also determined. Less