ArticleMolecular biology and evolution2024
Diversity and Evolution of Frog Visual Opsins: Spectral Tuning and Adaptation to Distinct Light Environments.
Article in Molecular biology and evolution, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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18 citing papers in PubMed, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- Chromosome-Level Genome Assembly of Dybowski's Frog (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Comparative Retinal Morphology of Two Sympatric Lizard Species from Distinct Microhabitats.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Accessible and robust machine learning approaches to improve the opsin genotype-phenotype map.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Article
- Caecilians maintain a functional long-wavelength-sensitive cone opsin gene despite signatures of relaxed selection and more than 200 million years of fossoriality.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2025Article
- The Effects of Light on Vertebrate Welfare: A Review.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Review
- Caecilians maintain a functional long-wavelength-sensitive cone opsin gene despite signatures of relaxed selection and more than 200 million years of fossoriality.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Compounding heterochrony shapes the salamander visual system across adaptive zones.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Impact of Light Spectrum on Tadpole Physiology and Gut Microbiota in the Dybowski's Frog (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Evolution of the Nonvisual and Visual Opsin Gene Repertoire in Ray-Finned Fishes.Genome biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Opsin gene expression plasticity and spectral sensitivity in male damselflies could mediate female colour morph detection.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Bioluminescence and environmental light drive the visual evolution of deep-sea shrimp (Oplophoroidea).Communications biology · 2025Article
- The Amphibian Genomics Consortium: advancing genomic and genetic resources for amphibian research and conservation.BMC genomics · 2024Review
- The Amphibian Genomics Consortium: advancing genomic and genetic resources for amphibian research and conservation.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Insights into the evolution of photoreceptor oil droplets in frogs and toads.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Diversity and Molecular Evolution of Nonvisual Opsin Genes across Environmental, Developmental, and Morphological Adaptations in Frogs.Molecular biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Diversity and Evolution of Frog Visual Opsins: Spectral Tuning and Adaptation to Distinct Light Environments.Molecular biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Discovering genotype-phenotype relationships with machine learning and the Visual Physiology Opsin Database (VPOD).GigaScience · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
28 authors at 18 institutions in 10 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Visual systems adapt to different light environments through several avenues including optical changes to the eye and neurological changes in how light signals are processed and interpreted. Spectral sensitivity can evolve via changes to visual pigments housed in the retinal photoreceptors through gene duplication and loss, differential and coexpression, and sequence evolution. Frogs provide an excellent, yet understudied, system for visual evolution research due to their diversity of ecologies (including biphasic aquatic-terrestrial life cycles) that we hypothesize imposed different selective pressures leading to adaptive evolution of the visual system, notably the opsins that encode the protein component of the visual pigments responsible for the first step in visual perception. Here, we analyze the diversity and evolution of visual opsin genes from 93 new eye transcriptomes plus published data for a combined dataset spanning 122 frog species and 34 families. We find that most species express the four visual opsins previously identified in frogs but show evidence for gene loss in two lineages. Further, we present evidence of positive selection in three opsins and shifts in selective pressures associated with differences in habitat and life history, but not activity pattern. We identify substantial novel variation in the visual opsins and, using microspectrophotometry, find highly variable spectral sensitivities, expanding known ranges for all frog visual pigments. Mutations at spectral-tuning sites only partially account for this variation, suggesting that frogs have used tuning pathways that are unique among vertebrates. These results support the hypothesis of adaptive evolution in photoreceptor physiology across the frog tree of life in response to varying environmental and ecological factors and further our growing understanding of vertebrate visual evolution.
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