Retinal Specialization and Feeding Behavior in Nocturnal vs. Diurnal Moths

以花为食的昆虫特别依赖视觉。大多数对昆虫的视觉研究都是在白天或白天活跃的物种上进行的。我们对飞蛾等夜间昆虫的视觉适应能力知之甚少，这些昆虫允许它们在热带森林等复杂环境中穿行，并在接近黑暗的情况下寻找花朵。视觉引导的行为，如从花中取食花蜜，是由特定的对颜色敏感的感觉细胞和大复眼视网膜的专门细分驱动的。这个项目使用生物化学和分子生物学来表征和定位鹰蛾眼睛中颜色视觉的光敏蛋白(视紫红蛋白)。对其他有白天觅食和不觅食成虫的鹰蛾物种的行为和解剖学研究与夜间觅食物种进行了比较。结果将突出夜间视觉取食的特殊适应，并与蜜蜂和蝴蝶造访花朵的大型知识库进行比较。这个项目具有生态学意义，因为很大一部分热带植物的授粉依赖于鹰蛾，它对进化生物学和视觉神经生物学也很重要。

Insects that feed on flowers are particularly dependent on vision. Most visual research on insects has been done on species active during the day, or diurnal. We know little about the visual adaptations in nocturnal insects like moths that allow them to maneuver through a complex environment such as tropical forest, and find flowers in near darkness. Visually-guided behaviors such as nectar feeding from flowers are driven by specific color-sensitive sensory cells and specialized subdivisions of the retina of their large compound eyes. This project uses biochemistry and molecular biology to characterize and localize the light-sensitive proteins (rhodopsins) for color vision in the eye of the hawkmoth Manduca. Behavioral and anatomical work on other hawkmoth species which have day-feeding and non-feeding adults are compared to the night-feeding species. Results will highlight the particular adaptations for visual feeding at night, and be compared with the large knowledge base about flower visitation by bees and butterflies. This project has ecological significance because a substantial proportion of tropical plant pollination depends on hawkmoths, and it also is important for evolutionary biology, as well as visual neurobiology.