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First published online January 18, 2008
Journal of Experimental Biology 211, 361-369 (2008)
Published by The Company of Biologists 2008
doi: 10.1242/jeb.012617
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The lycaenid butterfly Polyommatus icarus uses a duplicated blue opsin to see green

Marilou P. Sison-Mangus1, Adriana D. Briscoe1, Guillermo Zaccardi2,*, Helge Knüttel3 and Almut Kelber2,{dagger}

1 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA
2 Vision Group, Department of Cell and Organism Biology, Lund University, Helgonavägen 3, S-22362 Lund, Sweden
3 Department of Animal Ecology I, University of Bayreuth, Universitätsstr. 30, D-95440 Bayreuth, Germany

{dagger} Author for correspondence (e-mail: almut.kelber{at}cob.lu.se)

Accepted 14 November 2007

The functional significance of gene duplication is rarely addressed at the level of animal behavior. Butterflies are excellent models in this regard because they can be trained and the use of their opsin-based visual pigments in color vision can be assessed. In the present study, we demonstrate that the lycaenid Polyommatus icarus uses its duplicate blue (B2) opsin, BRh2, in conjunction with its long-wavelength (LW) opsin, LWRh, to see color in the green part of the light spectrum extending up to 560 nm. This is in contrast to butterflies in the genus Papilio, which use duplicate LW opsins to discriminate colors in the long-wavelength range. We also found that P. icarus has a heterogeneously expressed red filtering pigment and red-reflecting ommatidia in the ventral eye region. In behavioural tests, the butterflies could not discriminate colors in the red range (570–640 nm). This finding is significant because we have previously found that the nymphalid butterfly Heliconius erato has filter-pigment mediated color vision in the long wavelength range. Our results suggest that lateral filtering pigments may not always influence color vision in insects.

Key words: lycaenid, color vision, visual pigment, filter pigment, butterfly, opsin




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A. D. Briscoe
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[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


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