A Different Form of Color Vision in Mantis Shrimp

Abstract

One of the most complex eyes in the animal kingdom can be found in species of stomatopod crustaceans (mantis shrimp), some of which have 12 different photoreceptor types, each sampling a narrow set of wavelengths ranging from deep ultraviolet to far red (300 to 720 nanometers). Functionally, this chromatic complexity has presented a mystery. Why use 12 color channels when three or four are sufficient for fine color discrimination? Behavioral wavelength discrimination tests (Δλ functions) in stomatopods revealed a surprisingly poor performance, ruling out color vision that makes use of the conventional color-opponent coding system. Instead, our experiments suggest that stomatopods use a previously unknown color vision system based on temporal signaling combined with scanning eye movements, enabling a type of color recognition rather than discrimination.

Null point of discrimination in crustacean polarisation vision

“…Perhaps the relatively low polarisation sensitivity observed in the stomatopod is a consequence of some level of filtering of the polarisation information, a process that may be important for simplifying subsequent processing steps necessary for this unique scan vision system. Similar information reduction steps also seem to occur early in the stomatopod colour vision system (Thoen et al, 2014).…”

“…There are several proposed explanations for the extreme mobility of stomatopod eyes, including their use for target acquisition and tracking, and for scan movements associated with the colour and polarisation sensitivity in the mid-band region (Cronin et al, 1988;Land et al, 1990;Thoen et al, 2014;Marshall et al, 2014a). Such movements have strong implications for their polarisation vision system, which, as a result, does not appear to suffer from the null points experienced by stabilised twochannel receptor arrangements.…”

Animal coloration research: why it matters

“…Consider nocturnal helmet geckos Tarentola chazaliae, which possess large colour cones that are 350 times more sensitive than those of humans at the colour vision threshold [30], or the mantis shrimp Haptosquilla trispinosa. Despite the shrimp having 12 different photoreceptor types, they appear to be deficient in fine colour discrimination [31] and may in fact scan objects to rapidly recognize basic colours, though this idea needs further testing. It is only a matter of time before new camera systems exploit increased colour sensitivity, as in geckos, and rapid colour processing, as in mantis shrimps.…”

Multimodal cues improve prey localization under complex environmental conditions

“…Predators can be very efficient at using prey cues from single sensory modalities, such as mantis shrimps or dragonflies, which are highly specialized to hunt with their vision [14,15]. Many predators, however, hunt in environments in which the sensory conditions fluctuate widely over the day and across seasons.…”