ArticleScience advances2015
The energetic cost of vision and the evolution of eyeless Mexican cavefish.
Article in Science advances, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 85 papers.
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Who cites it
85 citing papers in PubMed.
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- Habitat-Driven Sexual Dimorphism inEcology and evolution · 2026Article
- Convergent evolution of albinism in cave animals is driven by shared mechanisms and adaptive advantages.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Novel mechanisms of chemosensory adaptation to the cave environment.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Tempo and drivers of 3D eye size evolution in temperate butterflies.Evolution letters · 2026Article
- Living at the Interface: Behavioral, Evolutionary and Ecological Insights of Spring Use by Highly Mobile Stygobiont Crustaceans,Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Hover Fly Eyes and Antennae Are Sexually Dimorphic but Do Not Tradeoff.microPublication biology · 2026Article
- Exposure to Predators Induces Phenotypic Plasticity in Cone Opsin Expression Profiles but not in Eye Size of Female Trinidad Guppies.Zoological studies · 2026Article
- Article
- HSP90 as an evolutionary capacitor drives adaptive eye size reduction via atonal.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Convergent Evolution in Amblyopsid Cavefishes and the Age of Eastern North American Subterranean Ecosystems.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Metabolic traits are shaped by phylogenetic conservatism and environment, not just body size.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Plasticity inProceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Widespread Genetic Signals of Visual System Adaptation in Deepwater Cichlid Fishes.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Light in the Darkness: Responses to Light and Diel Activity Rhythm in an Eyeless Cave Flatworm (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Will I stay or will I go? Eye morphology predicts individual migratory propensity in a partial migrant.The Journal of animal ecology · 2025Article
- Label-Free Multiphoton Imaging Reveals Volumetric Shifts Across Development in Sensory-Related Brain Regions of a Miniature Transparent Vertebrate.The Journal of comparative neurology · 2025Article
- Population Genomics of Premature Termination Codons in Cavefish With Substantial Trait Loss.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
25 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
One hypothesis for the reduction of vision in cave animals, such as the eyeless Mexican cavefish, is the high energetic cost of neural tissue and low food availability in subterranean habitats. However, data on relative brain and eye mass in this species or on any measure of the energetic cost of neural tissue are not available, making it difficult to evaluate the "expensive tissue hypothesis." We show that the eyes and optic tectum represent significant metabolic costs in the eyed phenotype. The cost of vision was calculated to be 15% of resting metabolism for a 1-g fish, decreasing to 5% in an 8.5-g fish as relative eye and brain size declined during growth. Our results demonstrate that the loss of the visual system in the cave phenotype substantially lowered the amount of energy expended on expensive neural tissue during diversification into subterranean rivers, in particular for juvenile fish.
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