ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2009
The evolution of early vertebrate photoreceptors.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 43 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
43 citing papers in PubMed, 120 citations in OpenAlex.
- Bioinformatic Analysis and Tissue-Specific Expression of Clock Genes andAnimals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Patterns of Proliferation in the Pacific Hagfish (Eptatretus stoutii) Retina Suggest an Ancient Origin for Adult Neurogenesis.The Journal of comparative neurology · 2026Article
- Comparative phenotypic analysis of rhodopsin supports stepwise evolution of dim-light vision in early vertebrates.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Visual pigments of basal lineages of bony fishes support independent ecological shifts from a shallow marine to a freshwater niche.Evolution letters · 2026Article
- The Chronological Trigger: The Orchestra Between Homeobox Genes and the Circadian Clock During Development.Biology of the cell · 2025Review
- Single cones give rise to multi-cone types in the retinas of fishes.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Trichromacy and ultraviolet vision in a nocturnal marsupial.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Article
- Gene networks and the evolution of olfactory organs, eyes, hair cells and motoneurons: a view encompassing lancelets, tunicates and vertebrates.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2024Review
- The evolutionary history and spectral tuning of vertebrate visual opsins.Developmental biology · 2023Review
- Vision and retina evolution: How to develop a retina.IBRO neuroscience reports · 2022Article
- The Birth of the Mammalian Sleep.Biology · 2022Review
- Hagfish to Illuminate the Developmental and Evolutionary Origins of the Vertebrate Retina.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2022Review
- Immunohistochemical Characterisation of the Whale Retina.Frontiers in neuroanatomy · 2022Article
- Molecular Evolution of Ultraviolet Visual Opsins and Spectral Tuning of Photoreceptors in Anemonefishes (Amphiprioninae).Genome biology and evolution · 2021Article
- The Ocular Gene Delivery Landscape.Biomolecules · 2021Review
- Understanding the retinal basis of vision across species.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2020Review
- Article
- The role of the optic tectum for visually evoked orienting and evasive movements.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- Retinal adaptation to dim light vision in spectacled caimans (Caiman crocodilus fuscus): Analysis of retinal ultrastructure.Experimental eye research · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Meeting the challenge of sampling an ancient aquatic landscape by the early vertebrates was crucial to their survival and would establish a retinal bauplan to be used by all subsequent vertebrate descendents. Image-forming eyes were under tremendous selection pressure and the ability to identify suitable prey and detect potential predators was thought to be one of the major drivers of speciation in the Early Cambrian. Based on the fossil record, we know that hagfishes, lampreys, holocephalans, elasmobranchs and lungfishes occupy critical stages in vertebrate evolution, having remained relatively unchanged over hundreds of millions of years. Now using extant representatives of these 'living fossils', we are able to piece together the evolution of vertebrate photoreception. While photoreception in hagfishes appears to be based on light detection and controlling circadian rhythms, rather than image formation, the photoreceptors of lampreys fall into five distinct classes and represent a critical stage in the dichotomy of rods and cones. At least four types of retinal cones sample the visual environment in lampreys mediating photopic (and potentially colour) vision, a sampling strategy retained by lungfishes, some modern teleosts, reptiles and birds. Trichromacy is retained in cartilaginous fishes (at least in batoids and holocephalans), where it is predicted that true scotopic (dim light) vision evolved in the common ancestor of all living gnathostomes. The capacity to discriminate colour and balance the tradeoff between resolution and sensitivity in the early vertebrates was an important driver of eye evolution, where many of the ocular features evolved were retained as vertebrates progressed on to land.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.