Medium/Long wavelength sensitive opsin diversity in Pitheciidae

Abstract

New World primates feature a complex colour vision system. Most species have polymorphic colour vision where males have a dichromatic colour perception and females can be either dichromatic or trichromatic. The adaptive value of high allelic diversity of opsins, a light sensitive protein, found in primates’ eyes remains unknown. Studies revealing the allelic diversity are important as they shed light on our understanding of the adaptive value of differences in the colouration of species and their ecologies. Here we investigate the allelic types found in Pitheciidae, an understudied New World primate family, revealing the diversity of medium/long wavelength sensitive opsins both in cryptic and conspicuous species of this primate family. We found five alleles in Cacajao, six in Callicebinae (i.e. Plecturocebus, Cheracebus, and Callicebus), four in Chiropotes, and three in Pithecia, some of them reported for the first time. Both cryptic and conspicuous species in this group presented high allelic diversity.

Color vision and niche partitioning in a diverse neotropical primate community in lowland Amazonian Ecuador

“…They are also the first population data for Ecuadorian A. belzebuth, L. lagotricha poeppigii, and S. sciureus macrodon. All the individual alleles that we detected had been reported previously for the genera we have studied: Ateles and Lagothrix et al, 1998), Plecturocebus/Callicebus (Bunce et al, 2011;Goulart et al, 2017), and Saimiri (Cropp et al, 2002;Hiramatsu et al, 2004;Neitz et al, 1991;Rowe & Jacobs, 2004).…”

“…These same alleles were also found previously in 16 male captive P. irrorata in Brazil (Boissinot et al., 1998). A more recent study (Goulart et al., 2017) that included museum specimens of two female P . irrorata identified a single novel allele (AYT), indicating that P. irrorata has four opsin alleles.…”

“…The spectral sensitivity of primate M/L opsins can be predicted primarily using the residues at three M/L opsin amino acid sites (Figure 2): position 180 (located in exon 3) and positions 277 and 285 (both located in exon 5). Consequently, most studies of platyrrhine color vision infer the tuning of M/L opsin alleles based on the so-called "three-sites rule" (Bunce et al, 2011;de Lima et al, 2015;Goulart et al, 2017;Hiramatsu et al, 2005). However, Matsumoto et al ( 2014) recently identified two novel nonsynonymous mutations (in amino acids 213 and 294) that shift the spectral sensitivities of M/L opsins more than predicted by the three-sites rule (Figure 2).…”

“…While most neotropical primates exhibit polymorphic trichromacy, prior research suggests that species can differ dramatically in the number of spectrally distinct M/L opsin alleles they possess. For example, non‐ Alouatta atelids (e.g., Ateles , Lagothrix ) typically exhibit only two alleles (Hiramatsu et al., 2005; Matsumoto et al., 2014), most cebids (e.g., Saguinus , Saimiri , Cebus , except Aotus ) have three alleles (Hiramatsu et al., 2005; Jacobs et al., 1993; Kawamura & Melin, 2017; Surridge et al., 2005), and pitheciids (e.g., Plecturocebus [formerly Callicebus ], Pithecia , Cacajao , Chiropotes ) can have between three and six alleles (Bunce et al., 2011; Corso et al., 2016; Goulart et al., 2017; Jacobs & Deegan, 2005). This variation in the number of spectrally different M/L alleles establishes a great diversity of color vision phenotypes, which potentially facilitate the exploitation of a diversity of resources (Melin et al., 2014).…”

Duetting Patterns of Titi Monkeys (Primates, Pitheciidae: Callicebinae) and Relationships with Phylogeny

“…Often, more than one communication channel is used, perhaps to increase detectability in a challenging environment or to convey additional information [ 5 , 6 , 7 ]. However, the predominance of one modality over another likely co-evolved with a species’ circadian activity, its diet and group size, and the habitat structure in which that species lives [ 8 , 9 ]. For diurnal, arboreal primates exploiting dense tropical forests, selection has favored long-range vocal communication over visual signaling as communicating in the visual domain is less effective owing to dense vegetation [ 10 , 11 ].…”