Skip to main content
Advertisement

Main menu

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Accepted manuscripts
    • Issue in progress
    • Latest complete issue
    • Issue archive
    • Archive by article type
    • Special issues
    • Subject collections
    • Interviews
    • Sign up for alerts
  • About us
    • About JEB
    • Editors and Board
    • Editor biographies
    • Travelling Fellowships
    • Grants and funding
    • Journal Meetings
    • Workshops
    • The Company of Biologists
    • Journal news
  • For authors
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Aims and scope
    • Presubmission enquiries
    • Article types
    • Manuscript preparation
    • Cover suggestions
    • Editorial process
    • Promoting your paper
    • Open Access
    • Outstanding paper prize
    • Biology Open transfer
  • Journal info
    • Journal policies
    • Rights and permissions
    • Media policies
    • Reviewer guide
    • Sign up for alerts
  • Contacts
    • Contact JEB
    • Subscriptions
    • Advertising
    • Feedback
  • COB
    • About The Company of Biologists
    • Development
    • Journal of Cell Science
    • Journal of Experimental Biology
    • Disease Models & Mechanisms
    • Biology Open

User menu

  • Log in

Search

  • Advanced search
Journal of Experimental Biology
  • COB
    • About The Company of Biologists
    • Development
    • Journal of Cell Science
    • Journal of Experimental Biology
    • Disease Models & Mechanisms
    • Biology Open

supporting biologistsinspiring biology

Journal of Experimental Biology

  • Log in
Advanced search

RSS  Twitter  Facebook  YouTube  

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Accepted manuscripts
    • Issue in progress
    • Latest complete issue
    • Issue archive
    • Archive by article type
    • Special issues
    • Subject collections
    • Interviews
    • Sign up for alerts
  • About us
    • About JEB
    • Editors and Board
    • Editor biographies
    • Travelling Fellowships
    • Grants and funding
    • Journal Meetings
    • Workshops
    • The Company of Biologists
    • Journal news
  • For authors
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Aims and scope
    • Presubmission enquiries
    • Article types
    • Manuscript preparation
    • Cover suggestions
    • Editorial process
    • Promoting your paper
    • Open Access
    • Outstanding paper prize
    • Biology Open transfer
  • Journal info
    • Journal policies
    • Rights and permissions
    • Media policies
    • Reviewer guide
    • Sign up for alerts
  • Contacts
    • Contact JEB
    • Subscriptions
    • Advertising
    • Feedback
Research Article
Photoresponses in the radiolar eyes of the fan worm Acromegalomma vesiculosum
Michael J. Bok, Dan-Eric Nilsson, Anders Garm
Journal of Experimental Biology 2019 222: jeb212779 doi: 10.1242/jeb.212779 Published 10 December 2019
Michael J. Bok
School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TQ, UK
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Michael J. Bok
  • For correspondence: mikebok@gmail.com
Dan-Eric Nilsson
Department of Biology, Lund Vision Group, Lund University, 223 62 Lund, Sweden
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Dan-Eric Nilsson
Anders Garm
Section of Marine Biology, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Anders Garm
  • Article
  • Figures & tables
  • Supp info
  • Info & metrics
  • PDF + SI
  • PDF
Loading

ABSTRACT

Fan worms (Annelida: Sabellidae) possess compound eyes and other photoreceptors on their radiolar feeding tentacles. These eyes putatively serve as an alarm system that alerts the worm to encroaching threats, eliciting a rapid defensive retraction into their protective tube. The structure and independent evolutionary derivation of these radiolar eyes make them a fascinating target for exploring the emergence of new sensory systems and visually guided behaviours. However, little is known about their physiology and how this impacts their function. Here, we present electroretinogram recordings from the radiolar eyes of the fan worm Acromegalomma vesiculosum. We examine their spectral sensitivity along with their dynamic range and temporal resolution. Our results show that they possess one class of photoreceptors with a single visual pigment peaking in the blue–green part of the spectrum around 510 nm, which matches the dominant wavelengths in their shallow coastal habitats. We found the eyes to have a rather high temporal resolution with a critical flicker fusion frequency around 35 Hz. The high temporal resolution of this response is ideally suited for detecting rapidly moving predators but also necessitates downstream signal processing to filter out caustic wave flicker. This study provides a fundamental understanding of how these eyes function. Furthermore, these findings emphasise a set of dynamic physiological principles that are well suited for governing a multi-eyed startle response in coastal aquatic habitats.

FOOTNOTES

  • Competing interests

    The authors declare no competing or financial interests.

  • Author contributions

    Conceptualization: M.J.B.; Methodology: M.J.B., A.L.G.; Software: M.J.B., A.L.G.; Formal analysis: M.J.B.; Investigation: M.J.B.; Resources: M.J.B., A.L.G.; Data curation: M.J.B.; Writing - original draft: M.J.B.; Writing - review & editing: M.J.B., D.-E.N., A.L.G.; Visualization: M.J.B.; Supervision: M.J.B., D.-E.N.; Project administration: M.J.B.; Funding acquisition: M.J.B., D.-E.N.

  • Funding

    This work was supported by the UK Research and Innovation: Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (grant BB/P011357/1) and the Swedish Science Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet; grant 2015-04690).

  • Supplementary information

    Supplementary information available online at http://jeb.biologists.org/lookup/doi/10.1242/jeb.212779.supplemental

  • Received September 12, 2019.
  • Accepted November 6, 2019.
  • © 2019. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd
http://www.biologists.com/user-licence-1-1/
View Full Text

Log in using your username and password

Forgot your user name or password?

Log in through your institution

You may be able to gain access using your login credentials for your institution. Contact your library if you do not have a username and password.
If your organization uses OpenAthens, you can log in using your OpenAthens username and password. To check if your institution is supported, please see this list. Contact your library for more details.

Pay Per Article - You may access this article (from the computer you are currently using) for 1 day for US$30.00 .

Regain Access - You can regain access to a recent Pay per Article purchase if your access period has not yet expired.

Previous ArticleNext Article
Back to top
Previous ArticleNext Article

This Issue

Keywords

  • Vision
  • Electroretinogram
  • Polychaete
  • Spectral sensitivity
  • Visual ecology
  • Sabellidae

 Download PDF

Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on Journal of Experimental Biology.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Photoresponses in the radiolar eyes of the fan worm Acromegalomma vesiculosum
(Your Name) has sent you a message from Journal of Experimental Biology
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the Journal of Experimental Biology web site.
Share
Research Article
Photoresponses in the radiolar eyes of the fan worm Acromegalomma vesiculosum
Michael J. Bok, Dan-Eric Nilsson, Anders Garm
Journal of Experimental Biology 2019 222: jeb212779 doi: 10.1242/jeb.212779 Published 10 December 2019
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Research Article
Photoresponses in the radiolar eyes of the fan worm Acromegalomma vesiculosum
Michael J. Bok, Dan-Eric Nilsson, Anders Garm
Journal of Experimental Biology 2019 222: jeb212779 doi: 10.1242/jeb.212779 Published 10 December 2019

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Alerts

Please log in to add an alert for this article.

Sign in to email alerts with your email address

Article navigation

  • Top
  • Article
    • ABSTRACT
    • INTRODUCTION
    • MATERIALS AND METHODS
    • RESULTS
    • DISCUSSION
    • Acknowledgements
    • FOOTNOTES
    • References
  • Figures & tables
  • Supp info
  • Info & metrics
  • PDF + SI
  • PDF

Related articles

Cited by...

More in this TOC section

  • Energy compensation and received echo level dynamics in CF bats during active target approaches
  • Oxygenation properties of hemoglobin and the evolutionary origins of isoform multiplicity in an amphibious air-breathing fish, the blue-spotted mudskipper (Boleophthalmus pectinirostris)
  • Metabolic partitioning of sucrose and seasonal changes in fat turnover rate in ruby-throated hummingbirds (Archilochus colubris)
Show more RESEARCH ARTICLE

Similar articles

Other journals from The Company of Biologists

Development

Journal of Cell Science

Disease Models & Mechanisms

Biology Open

Advertisement

Meet the team at SICB – 3-7 January 2020

Meet the Journal of Experimental Biology team at the SICB 2020 meeting in Austin, Texas! News & Views Editor Kathryn Knight and Reviews Editor Stefan Galander will be at booth 507, along with a selection of JEB goodies including the 2020 Calendar, 2019 Highlights booklet and new JEB T-shirts.


Springy bamboo poles help villagers carry more than their own body weight

One of the villagers walking with a flexible bamboo pole

People in Southeast Asia often carry extremely heavy loads suspended from a bouncy bamboo pole slung over one shoulder. It turns out that they adjust their stride to bounce in time with the pole, allowing them to save 20% of their energy. Read more.


Two-year pilot transitional open access agreement

We are excited to announce a two-year pilot transitional open access agreement with Jisc from January 2020. Researchers at participating institutions will have unlimited access to The Company of Biologists’ three subscription journals and will be able to publish their research papers open access. Find out more.


Commentary — The utility and determination of Pcrit in fishes

Gordon Ultsch and Matthew Regan outline why Pcrit is a useful and informative comparator of hypoxia tolerance in fishes, provided it is determined using standardized respirometry methods and sound statistical approaches.


Where will your research take you?

Early-career researchers can apply for up to £2,500 to offset the cost of travel and expenses to make collaborative visits to other labs around the world. Read about Pierre’s experience in Greenland, where he continued research into the Greenland Shark’s remarkable longevity.

Articles

  • Accepted manuscripts
  • Issue in progress
  • Latest complete issue
  • Issue archive
  • Archive by article type
  • Special issues
  • Subject collections
  • Interviews
  • Sign up for alerts

About us

  • About JEB
  • Editors and Board
  • Editor biographies
  • Travelling Fellowships
  • Grants and funding
  • Journal Meetings
  • Workshops
  • The Company of Biologists
  • Journal news

For Authors

  • Submit a manuscript
  • Aims and scope
  • Presubmission enquiries
  • Article types
  • Manuscript preparation
  • Cover suggestions
  • Editorial process
  • Promoting your paper
  • Open Access
  • Outstanding paper prize
  • Biology Open transfer

Journal Info

  • Journal policies
  • Rights and permissions
  • Media policies
  • Reviewer guide
  • Sign up for alerts

Contact

  • Contact JEB
  • Subscriptions
  • Advertising
  • Feedback

 Twitter   YouTube   LinkedIn

© 2019   The Company of Biologists Ltd   Registered Charity 277992