期刊
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY
卷 220, 期 13, 页码 2335-2344出版社
COMPANY BIOLOGISTS LTD
DOI: 10.1242/jeb.159103
关键词
Panchlora nivea; Periplaneta americana; Information processing; Visual ecology
类别
资金
- Kakenhi grant from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
Flying is often associated with superior visual performance, as good vision is crucial for detection and implementation of rapid visually guided aerial movements. To understand the evolution of insect visual systems it is therefore important to compare phylogenetically related species with different investments in flight capability. Here, we describe and compare morphological and electrophysiological properties of photoreceptors from the habitually flying green cockroach Panchlora nivea and the American cockroach Periplaneta americana, which flies only at high ambient temperatures. In contrast to Periplaneta, ommatidia in Panchlora were characterized by two-tiered rhabdom, whichmight facilitate detection of polarized light while flying in the dark. In patch-clamp experiments, we assessed the absolute sensitivity to light, elementary and macroscopic light-activated current and voltage responses, voltage-activated potassium (Kv) conductances, and information transfer. Both species are nocturnal, and their photoreceptors were similarly sensitive to light. However, a number of important differences were found, including the presence in Panchlora of a prominent transient Kv current and a generally low variability in photoreceptor properties. The maximal information rate in Panchlora was one-third higher than in Periplaneta, owing to a substantially higher gain and membrane corner frequency. The differences in performance could not be completely explained by dissimilarities in the light-activated or Kv conductances; instead, we suggest that the superior performance of Panchlora photoreceptors mainly originates from better synchronization of elementary responses. These findings raise the issue of whether the evolutionary tuning of photoreceptor properties to visual demands proceeded differently in Blattodea than in Diptera.
作者
我是这篇论文的作者
点击您的名字以认领此论文并将其添加到您的个人资料中。
推荐
暂无数据