ReviewThe Journal of physiology2017
The eyes and vision of butterflies.
Review in The Journal of physiology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 39 papers.
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Who cites it
39 citing papers in PubMed.
- Differences in structural color and population genetic structure of Western and Central Palearctic Polyommatus icarus populations.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Emerging tools to advance neuroethology in butterflies and moths.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2026Review
- Cellular innovations and diversity in the lepidopteran compound eye.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2026Review
- Graded opsin co-expression along the butterfly retina fine tunes the spectral sensitivity of a colour-opponent cell across the visual field.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2026Article
- Dragonfly red opsins share a common tuning mechanism with mammalian red opsins and further enhancement of near-infrared sensitivity.Cellular and molecular life sciences : CMLS · 2026Article
- Reproductive status modulates colour preference and multimodal cue integration in host plant location by butterflies.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Innate spectral preferences and aversive visual learning reveal wavelength-dependent preferences and discrimination in Drosophila melanogaster.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Blooming Urban Table: Flower Resources for Butterflies in Small Wastelands of a Large European City.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- A comprehensive characterization of opsin distribution across the visual system in the three castes of the honeybee.iScience · 2025Article
- Unraveling the Compound Eye Design of the Diurnal MothInsects · 2025Article
- A test of the Grant-Stebbins pollinator-shift model of floral evolution.The New phytologist · 2025Article
- Deep conservation complemented by novelty and innovation in the insect eye ground plan.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Ancestral photoreceptor diversity as the basis of visual behaviour.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Review
- Opsin Gene Duplication in Lepidoptera: Retrotransposition, Sex Linkage, and Gene Expression.Molecular biology and evolution · 2023Article
- Bioinspired, vertically stacked, and perovskite nanocrystal-enhanced CMOS imaging sensors for resolving UV spectral signatures.Science advances · 2023Article
- Phylogenetical Position versus Pollination Syndromes: Floral Trichomes of Central American and MexicanInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
- Colour Selection and Olfactory Responses ofInsects · 2023Article
- Article
- High diversity of arthropod colour vision: from genes to ecology.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Simple and complex, sexually dimorphic retinal mosaic of fritillary butterflies.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Butterflies use colour vision when searching for flowers. Unlike the trichromatic retinas of humans (blue, green and red cones; plus rods) and honeybees (ultraviolet, blue and green photoreceptors), butterfly retinas typically have six or more photoreceptor classes with distinct spectral sensitivities. The eyes of the Japanese yellow swallowtail (Papilio xuthus) contain ultraviolet, violet, blue, green, red and broad-band receptors, with each ommatidium housing nine photoreceptor cells in one of three fixed combinations. The Papilio eye is thus a random patchwork of three types of spectrally heterogeneous ommatidia. To determine whether Papilio use all of their receptors to see colours, we measured their ability to discriminate monochromatic lights of slightly different wavelengths. We found that Papilio can detect differences as small as 1-2 nm in three wavelength regions, rivalling human performance. We then used mathematical modelling to infer which photoreceptors are involved in wavelength discrimination. Our simulation indicated that the Papilio vision is tetrachromatic, employing the ultraviolet, blue, green and red receptors. The random array of three ommatidial types is a common feature in butterflies. To address the question of how the spectrally complex eyes of butterflies evolved, we studied their developmental process. We have found that the development of butterfly eyes shares its molecular logic with that of Drosophila: the three-way stochastic expression pattern of the transcription factor Spineless determines the fate of ommatidia, creating the random array in Papilio.
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