In animals photoreception refers to mechanisms of light detection that lead to vision and depends on specialized light-sensitive cells called photoreceptors, which are located in the eye. The quality of vision provided by photoreceptors varies enormously among animals. For example, some simple eyes such as those of flatworms have few photoreceptors and are capable of determining only the approximate direction of a light source. In contrast, the human eye has 100 million photoreceptors and can resolve one minute of arc (one-sixtieth of a degree), which is about 4,000 times better than the resolution achieved by the flatworm eye.
The following article discusses the diversity and evolution of eyes, the structure and function of photoreceptors, and the central processing of visual information in the brain. For more information about the detection of light, see optics; for general aspects concerning the response of organisms to their environments, see sensory reception.
Diversity of eyes
The eyes of animals are diverse not only in size and shape but also in the ways in which they function. For example, the eyes of fish from the deep sea often show variations on the basic spherical design of the eye. In these fish, the eye’s field of view is restricted to the upward direction, presumably because this is the only direction from which there is any light from the surface. This makes the eye tubular in shape. Some fish living in the deep sea have reduced eyelike structures directed downward (e.g., Bathylychnops, which has a second lens and retina attached to the main eye); it is thought that the function of these structures is to detect bioluminescent creatures. On the ocean floor, where no light from the sky penetrates, eyes are often reduced or absent. However, in the case of Ipnops, which appears to be eyeless, the retina is still present as a pair of plates covering the front of the top of the head, although there is no lens or any other optical structure. The function of this eye is unknown.
The placing of the eyes in the head varies. Predators, such as felines and owls, have forward-pointing eyes and the ability to judge distance by binocular triangulation. Herbivorous species that are likely to be victims of predation, such as mice and rabbits, usually have their eyes almost opposite each other, giving near-complete coverage of their surroundings. In addition to placement in the head, the structure of the eye varies among animals. Nocturnal animals, such as the house mouse and opossum, have almost spherical lenses filling most of the eye cavity. This design allows the eye to capture the maximum amount of light possible. In contrast, diurnal animals, such as humans and most birds, have smaller, thinner lenses placed well forward in the eye. Nocturnal animals usually have retinas with a preponderance of photoreceptors called rods, which do not detect colour but perceive size, shape, and brightness. Strictly diurnal animals, such as squirrels and many birds, have retinas containing photoreceptors called cones, which perceive both colour and fine detail. A slit pupil is common in nocturnal animals, as it can be closed more effectively in bright light than a round pupil. In addition, nocturnal animals, such as cats and bush babies, are usually equipped with a tapetum lucidum, a reflector behind the retina designed to give receptors a second chance to catch photons that were missed on their first passage through the retina.
Animals such as seals, otters, and diving birds, which move from air to water and back, have evolved uniquely shaped corneas—the transparent membrane in front of the eye that separates fluids inside the eye from fluids outside the eye. The cornea functions to increase the focusing power of the eye; however, optical power is greatly reduced when there is fluid on both sides of the membrane. As a result, seals, which have a nearly flat cornea with little optical power in air or water, rely on a re-evolved spherical lens to produce images. Diving ducks, on the other hand, compensate for the loss of optical power in water by squeezing the lens into the bony ring around the iris, forming a high curvature blip on the lens surface, which shortens its focal length (the distance from the retina to the centre of the lens). One of the most interesting examples of amphibious optics occurs in the “four-eyed fish” of the genus Anableps, which cruises the surface meniscus with the upper part of the eye looking into air and the lower part looking into water. It makes use of an elliptical lens, with the relatively flat sides adding little to the power of the cornea and the higher curvature ends focusing light from below the surface, where the cornea is ineffective.
Though the eyes of animals are diverse in structure and use distinct optical mechanisms to achieve resolution, eyes can be differentiated into two primary types: single-chambered and compound. Single-chambered eyes (sometimes called camera eyes) are concave structures in which the photoreceptors are supplied with light that enters the eye through a single lens. In contrast, compound eyes are convex structures in which the photoreceptors are supplied with light that enters the eye through multiple lenses. The possession of multiple lenses is what gives these eyes their characteristic faceted appearance.
In most of the invertebrate phyla, eyes consist of a cup of dark pigment that contains anywhere from a few photoreceptors to a few hundred photoreceptors. In most pigment cup eyes there is no optical system other than the opening, or aperture, through which light enters the cup. This aperture acts as a wide pinhole and restricts the width of the cone of light that reaches any one photoreceptor, thereby providing a very limited degree of resolution. Pigment cup eyes are very small, typically 100 μm (0.004 inch) or less in diameter. They are capable of supplying information about the general direction of light, which is adequate for finding the right part of the environment in which to seek food. However, they are of little value for hunting prey or evading predators. In 1977 Austrian zoologist Luitfried von Salvini-Plawen and American biologist Ernst Mayr estimated that pigment cup eyes evolved independently between 40 and 65 times across the animal kingdom. These estimates were based on a variety of differences in microstructure among pigment cup eyes of different organisms. Pigment cup eyes were undoubtedly the starting point for the evolution of the much larger and more optically complex eyes of mollusks and vertebrates.
Pinhole eyes, in which the size of the pigment aperture is reduced, have better resolution than pigment cup eyes. The most impressive pinhole eyes are found in the mollusk genus Nautilus, a member of a cephalopod group that has changed little since the Cambrian Period (about 542 million to 488 million years ago). These organisms have eyes that are large, about 10 mm (0.39 inch) across, with millions of photoreceptors. They also have muscles that move the eyes and pupils that can vary in diameter, from 0.4–2.8 mm (0.02–0.11 inch), with light intensity. These features all suggest an eye that should be comparable in performance to the eyes of other cephalopods, such as the genus Octopus. However, because there is no lens and each photoreceptor must cover a wide angle of the field of view, the image in the Nautilus eye is of very poor resolution. Even with the pupil at its smallest, each receptor views an angle of more than two degrees, compared with a few fractions of a degree in Octopus. In addition, because the pupil has to be small in order to achieve even a modest degree of resolution, the image produced in the Nautilus eye is extremely dim. Thus, a limitation of pinhole eyes is that any improvement in resolution is at the expense of sensitivity; this is not true of eyes that contain lenses. There are one or two other eyes in gastropod mollusks that could qualify as pinhole eyes, notably those of the abalone genus Haliotis. However, none of these eyes rival the eyes of Nautilus in size or complexity.
Relative to pinhole eyes, lens eyes have greatly improved resolution and image brightness. Lenses were formed by increasing the refractive index of material in the chamber by adding denser material, such as mucus or protein. This converged incoming rays of light, thereby reducing the angle over which each photoreceptor receives light. The continuation of this process ultimately results in a lens capable of forming an image focused on the retina. Most lenses in aquatic animals are spherical, because this shape gives the shortest focal length for a lens of a given diameter, which in turn gives the brightest image. Lens eyes focus an image either by physically moving the lens toward or away from the retina or by using eye muscles to adjust the shape of the lens.
For many years the lens properties that allow for the formation of quality images in the eye were poorly understood. Lenses made of homogeneous material (e.g., glass or dry protein) suffer from a defect known as spherical aberration, in which peripheral rays are focused too strongly, resulting in a poor image. In the 19th century, Scottish mathematician and physicist James Clerk Maxwell discovered that the lens of the eye must contain a gradient of refractive index, with the highest degree of refraction occurring in the centre of the lens. In the late 19th century the physiologist Matthiessen showed that this was true for fish, marine mammals, and cephalopod mollusks. It is also true of many gastropod mollusks, some marine worms (family Alciopidae), and at least one group of crustaceans, the copepod genus Labidocera. Two measurements, focal length and radius of curvature of the lens, can be used to distinguish gradient lenses from homogeneous lenses. For example, gradient lenses have a much shorter focal length than homogeneous lenses with the same central refractive index, and the radius of curvature of a gradient lens is about 2.5 lens radii, compared with 4 radii for a homogeneous lens. The ratio of focal length to radius of curvature is known as the Matthiessen ratio (named for its discoverer, German physicist and zoologist Ludwig Matthiessen) and is used to determine the optical quality of lenses.
The lens eyes of fish and cephalopod mollusks are superficially very similar. Both are spherical and have a Matthiessen ratio lens that can be focused by moving it toward and away from the retina, an iris that can contract, and external muscles that move the eyes in similar ways. However, fish and cephalopod mollusks evolved quite independently of each other. An obvious difference between the eyes of these organisms is in the structure of the retina. The vertebrate retina is inverse, with the neurons emerging from the front of the retina and the nerve fibres burrowing out through the optic disk at the back of the eye to form the optic nerve. The cephalopod retina is everse, meaning the fibres of the neurons leave the eye directly from the rear portions of the photoreceptors. The photoreceptors themselves are different too. Vertebrate photoreceptors, the rods and cones, are made of disks derived from cilia, and they hyperpolarize (become more negative) when light strikes them. In contrast, cephalopod photoreceptors are made from arrays of microvilli (fingerlike projections) and depolarize (become less negative) in response to light. The developmental origins of the eyes are also different. Vertebrate eyes come from neural tissue, whereas cephalopod eyes come from epidermal tissue. This is a classic case of convergent evolution and demonstrates the development of functional similarities derived from common constraints.
When vertebrates emerged onto land, they acquired a new refracting surface, the cornea. Because of the difference in refractive index between air and water, a curved cornea is an image-forming lens in its own right. Its focal length is given by f = nr/(n-1), where n is the refractive index of the fluid of the eye, and r is the radius of curvature of the cornea. All land vertebrates have lenses, but the lens is flattened and weakened compared with a fish lens. In the human eye the cornea is responsible for about two-thirds of the eye’s optical power, and the lens provides the remaining one-third.
Spherical corneas, similar to spherical lenses, can suffer from spherical aberration. To avoid this, the human cornea developed an ellipsoidal shape, with the highest curvature in the centre. A consequence of this nonspherical design is that the cornea has only one axis of symmetry, and the best image quality occurs close to this axis, which corresponds with central vision (as opposed to peripheral vision). In addition, central vision is aided by a region of high photoreceptor density, known as the fovea or the less clearly defined “area centralis,” that lies close to the central axis of the eye and specializes in acute vision.
Corneal eyes are found in spiders, many of which have eyes with excellent image-forming capabilities. Spiders typically have eight eyes, two of which, the principal eyes, point forward and are used in tasks such as the recognition of members of their own species. Hunting spiders use the remaining three pairs, secondary eyes, as movement detectors. However, in web-building spiders, the secondary eyes are underfocused and are used as navigation aids, detecting the position of the Sun and the pattern of polarized light in the sky. Jumping spiders have the best vision of any spider group, and their principal eyes can resolve a few minutes of arc, which is many times better than the eyes of the insects on which they prey. The eyes of jumping spiders are also unusual in that the retinas scan to and fro across the image while the spider identifies the nature of its target.
Insects also have corneal single-chambered eyes. The main eyes of many insect larvae consist of a small number of ocelli, each with a single cornea. The main organs of sight of most insects as adults are the compound eyes, but flying insects also have three simple dorsal ocelli. These are generally underfocused, giving blurred images; their function is to monitor the zenith and the horizon, supplying a rapid reaction system for maintaining level flight.
Scallops (Pecten) have about 50–100 single-chambered eyes in which the image is formed not by a lens but by a concave mirror. In 1965 British neurobiologist Michael F. Land (the author of this article) found that although scallop eyes have a lens, it is too weak to produce an image in the eye. In order to form a visible image, the back of the eye contains a mirror that reflects light to the photoreceptors. The mirror in Pecten is a multilayer structure made of alternating layers of guanine and cytoplasm, and each layer is a quarter of a wavelength (about 0.1 μm in the visible spectrum) thick. The structure produces constructive interference for green light, which gives it its high reflectance. Many other mirrors in animals are constructed in a similar manner, including the scales of silvery fish, the wings of certain butterflies (e.g., the Morpho genus), and the iridescent feathers of many birds. The eyes of Pecten also have two retinas, one made up of a layer of conventional microvillus receptors close to the mirror and out of focus, and the second made up of a layer with ciliary receptors in the plane of the image. The second layer responds when the image of a dark object moves across it; this response causes the scallop to shut its shell in defense against potential predation.
Reflecting eyes such as those of Pecten are not common. A number of copepod and ostracod crustaceans possess eyes with mirrors, but the mirrors are so small that it is difficult to tell whether the images are used. An exception is the large ostracod Gigantocypris, a creature with two parabolic reflectors several millimetres across. It lives in the deep ocean and probably uses its eyes to detect bioluminescent organisms on which it preys. The images are poor, but the light-gathering power is enormous. A problem with all concave mirror eyes is that light passes through the retina once, unfocused, before it returns, focused, from the mirror. As a result, photoreceptors see a low-contrast image, and this design flaw probably accounts for the rare occurrence of these eyes.
Compound eyes are made up of many optical elements arranged around the outside of a convex supporting structure. They fall into two broad categories with fundamentally different optical mechanisms. In apposition compound eyes each lens with its associated photoreceptors is an independent unit (the ommatidium), which views the light from a small region of the outside world. In superposition eyes the optical elements do not act independently; instead, they act together to produce a single erect image lying deep in the eye. In this respect they have more in common with single-chambered eyes, even though the way the image is produced is quite different.
Apposition eyes were almost certainly the original type of compound eye and are the oldest fossil eyes known, identified from the trilobites of the Cambrian Period. Although compound eyes are most often associated with the arthropods, especially insects and crustaceans, compound eyes evolved independently in two other phyla, the mollusks and the annelids. In the mollusk phylum, clams of the genera Arca and Barbatia have numerous tiny compound eyes, each with up to a hundred ommatidia, situated around their mantles. In these tiny eyes each ommatidium consists of a photoreceptor cell and screening pigment cells. The eyes have no lenses and rely simply on shadowing from the pigment tube to restrict the field of view. In the annelid phylum the tube worms of the family Sabellidae have eyes similar to those of Arca and Barbatia at various locations on the tentacles. However, these eyes differ in that they have lenses. The function of the eyes of both mollusks and annelids is much the same as the mirror eyes of Pecten; they see movement and initiate protective behaviour, causing the shell to shut or the organism to withdraw into a tube.
In arthropods most apposition eyes have a similar structure. Each ommatidium consists of a cornea, which in land insects is curved and acts as a lens. Beneath the cornea is a transparent crystalline cone through which rays converge to an image at the tip of a receptive structure, known as the rhabdom. The rhabdom is rodlike and consists of interdigitating fingerlike processes (microvilli) contributed by a small number of photoreceptor cells. The number of microvilli varies, with eight being the typical number found in insects. In addition, there are pigment cells of various kinds that separate one ommatidium from the next; these cells may act to restrict the amount of light that each rhabdom receives. Beneath the photoreceptor cells there are usually three ganglionic layers—the lamina, the medulla, and the lobula—that form a set of neuronal relays, and the rhabdom is connected to these layers by a single axon. The neuronal relays map and remap input from the retinal photoreceptors, thereby generating increasingly complex responses to contrast, motion, and form.
In aquatic insects and crustaceans the corneal surface cannot act as a lens because it has no refractive power. Some water bugs (e.g., Notonecta, or back swimmers) use curved surfaces behind and within the lens to achieve the required ray bending, whereas others use a structure known as a lens cylinder. Similar to fish lenses, lens cylinders bend light, using an internal gradient of refractive index, highest on the axis and falling parabolically to the cylinder wall. In the 1890s Austrian physiologist Sigmund Exner was the first to show that lens cylinders can be used to form images in the eye. He discovered this during his studies of the ommatidia of the horseshoe crab Limulus.
A problem that remained poorly understood until the 1960s is the relationship between the inverted images formed in individual ommatidia and the image formed across the eye as a whole. The question was first raised in the 1690s when Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek observed multiple inverted images of his candle flame through the cleaned cornea of an insect eye. Later investigations of the ommatidial structure revealed that in apposition eyes each ommatidium is independent and sees a small portion of the field of view. The field of view is defined by the lens, which also serves to increase the amount of light reaching the rhabdom. Each rhabdom scrambles and averages the light it receives, and the individual ommatidial images are sent via neurons from the ommatidia to the brain. In the brain, the separate images are perceived as a single overall image. The array of images formed by the convex sampling surface of the apposition compound eye is functionally equivalent to the concave sampling surface of the retina in a single-chambered eye.
Neural superposition eyes
Conventional apposition eyes, such as those of bees and crabs, have a similar optical design to the eyes of flies (Diptera). However, in fly eyes the photopigment-bearing membrane regions of the photoreceptors are not fused into a single rhabdom. Instead, they stay separated as eight individual rodlets (effectively seven, since two lie one above the other), known as rhabdomeres, each with its own axon. This means that each ommatidium should be capable of a seven-point resolution of the image, which raises the problem of incorporating multiple inverted images into a single erect image that the ordinary apposition eye avoids. In 1967 German biologist Kuno Kirschfeld showed that the angles between the individual rhabdomeres in one ommatidium are the same as those between adjacent ommatidia. As a result, each of the seven rhabdomeres in one ommatidium shares a field of view with a rhabdomere in a neighbouring ommatidium. In addition, all seven rhabdomeres that share a common field of view send their axons to the same place in the first ganglionic layer—the lamina. Thus, at the level of the lamina the image is no different from that in an ordinary apposition eye. However, because each of the seven photoreceptor axon inputs connects to second-order neurons, the image at the level of the lamina is effectively seven times brighter than in the photoreceptors themselves. This allows flies to fly earlier in the morning and later in the evening than other insects with eyes of similar resolution. This variant of the apposition eye has been called neural superposition.
Wavelength and plane of polarization
Although there is no further spatial resolution within a rhabdom, the various photoreceptors in each ommatidium do have the capacity to resolve two other features of the image, wavelength and plane of polarization. The different photoreceptors do not all have the same spectral sensitivities (sensitivities to different wavelengths). For example, in the honeybee there are three photopigments in each ommatidium, with maximum sensitivities in the ultraviolet, the blue, and the green regions of the spectrum. This forms the basis of a trichromatic colour vision system that allows bees to distinguish accurately between different flower colours. Some butterflies have four visual pigments, one of which is maximally sensitive to red wavelengths. The most impressive array of pigments is found in mantis shrimps (order Stomatopoda), where there are 12 visual pigments in a special band across the eye. Eight pigments cover the visible spectrum, and four cover the ultraviolet region.
Unlike humans, many arthropods have the ability to resolve the plane of polarized light. Single photons of light are wave packets in which the electrical and magnetic components of the wave are at right angles. The plane that contains the electrical component is known as the plane of polarization. Sunlight contains photons polarized in all possible planes and therefore is unpolarized. However, the atmosphere scatters light selectively, in a way that results in a pattern of polarization in the sky that is directly related to the position of the Sun. Austrian zoologist Karl von Frisch showed that bees could navigate by using the pattern of polarization instead of the Sun when the sky was overcast. The organization of the photopigment molecules on the microvilli in the rhabdoms of bees makes this type of navigation possible. A photon will be detected only if the light-sensitive double bond of the photopigment molecule lies in the plane of polarization of the photon. The rhabdoms in the dorsal regions of bee eyes have their photopigment molecules aligned with the axes of the microvilli, which lie parallel to one another in the photoreceptor. As a result, each photoreceptor is able to act as a detector for a particular plane of polarization. The whole array of detectors in the bee’s eyes is arranged in a way that matches the polarization pattern in the sky, thus enabling the bee to easily detect the symmetry plane of the pattern, which is the plane containing the Sun.
The other physical process that results in polarization is reflection. For example, a water surface polarizes reflected light so that the plane of polarization is parallel to the plane of the surface. Many insects, including back swimmers of Notonecta, make use of this property to find water when flying between pools. The mechanism is essentially the same as in the bee eye. There are pairs of photoreceptors with opposing microvillar orientations in the downward-pointing region of the eye, and when the photoreceptors are differentially stimulated by the polarized light from a reflecting surface, the insect makes a dive. The reason that humans cannot detect polarized light is that the photopigment molecules can take up all possible orientations within the disks of the rods and cones, unlike the microvilli of arthropods, in which the molecules are constrained to lie parallel to the microvillar axis.
Differences in resolution
The number of ommatidia in apposition eyes varies from a handful, as in primitive wingless insects and some ants, to as many as 30,000 in each eye of some dragonflies (order Odonata). The housefly has 3,000 ommatidia per eye, and the vinegar fly (or fruit fly) has 700 per eye. In general, the resolution of the eye increases with increasing ommatidial number. However, the physical principle of diffraction means that the smaller the lens, the worse the resolution of the image. This is why astronomical telescopes have huge lenses (or mirrors), and it is also why the tiny lenses of compound eyes have poor resolution. A bee’s eye, with 25-μm- (0.001-inch-) wide lenses, can resolve about one degree. The human eye, with normal visual acuity (20/20 vision), can resolve lines spaced less than one arc minute (one-sixtieth of one degree) apart, which is about 60 times better than a bee. In addition, the single lens of the human eye has an aperture diameter (in daylight) of 2.5 mm (0.1 inch), 100 times wider than that of a single lens of a bee. If a bee were to attempt to improve its resolution by a factor of two, it would have to double the diameter of each lens, and it would need to double the number of ommatidia to exploit the improved resolution. As a result, the size of an apposition eye would increase as the square of the required resolution, leading to absurdly large eyes. In 1894 British physicist Henry Mallock calculated that a compound eye with the same resolution as human central vision would have a radius of 6 metres (19 feet). Given this problem, a resolution of one-quarter of a degree, found in the large eyes of dragonflies, is probably the best that any insect can manage.
Because increased resolution comes at a very high cost in terms of overall eye size, many insects have eyes with local regions of increased resolution (acute zones), in which the lenses are larger. The need for higher resolution is usually connected with sex or predation. In many male dipteran flies and male (drone) bees, there is an area in the upper frontal region of the eyes where the facets are enlarged, giving resolution that is up to three times more acute than elsewhere in the eye. The acute resolution is used in the detection and pursuit of females. In one hover fly genus (Syritta) the males make use of their superior resolution to stay just outside the distance at which females can detect them. In this way a male can stalk a female on the wing until she lands on a flower, at which point he pounces. In a few flies, such as male bibionids (March flies) and simuliids (black flies), the high- and low-resolution parts of the eye form separate structures, making the eye appear doubled. Insects that catch other insects on the wing also have special “acute zones.” Both sexes of robber fly (family Asilidae) have enlarged facets in the frontal region of the eye, and dragonflies have a variety of more or less upward-pointing high-resolution regions that they use to spot flying insects against the sky. The hyperiid amphipods, medium-sized crustaceans from the shallow and deep waters of the ocean, have visual problems similar to those of dragonflies, although in this case they are trying to spot the silhouettes of potential prey against the residual light from the surface. This has led to the development of highly specialized divided eyes in some species, most notably in Phronima, in which the whole of the top of the head is used to provide high resolution and sensitivity over a narrow (about 10 degrees) field of view. Not all acute zones are upward-pointing. Some empid flies (or dance flies), which cruise around just above ponds looking for insects trapped in the water surface, have enlarged facets arranged in a belt around the eye’s equator—the region that views the water surface.
Crepuscular (active at twilight) and nocturnal insects (e.g., moths), as well as many crustaceans from the dim midwater regions of the ocean, have compound eyes known as superposition eyes, which are fundamentally different from the apposition type. Superposition eyes look superficially similar to apposition eyes in that they have an array of facets around a convex structure. However, outside of this superficial resemblance, the two types differ greatly. The key anatomical features of superposition eyes include the existence of a wide transparent clear zone beneath the optical elements and a deep-lying retinal layer, usually situated about halfway between the eye surface and the centre of curvature of the eye. Unlike apposition eyes, where the lenses each form a small inverted image, the optical elements in superposition eyes form a single erect image, located deep in the eye on the surface of the retina. The image is formed by the superimposed (hence the name superposition) ray-contributions from a large number of facets. Thus, in some ways this type of eye resembles the single-chambered eye in that there is only one image, which is projected through a transparent region onto the retina.
Refracting, reflecting, and parabolic optical mechanisms
In superposition eyes the number of facets that contribute to the production of a single image depends on the type of optical mechanism involved. There are three general mechanisms, based on lenses (refracting superposition), mirrors (reflecting superposition), and lens-mirror combinations (parabolic superposition).
The refracting superposition mechanism was discovered by Austrian physiologist Sigmund Exner in the 1880s. He reasoned that the geometrical requirement for superposition was that each lens element should bend light in such a way that rays entering the element at a given angle to its axis would emerge at a similar angle on the same side of the axis. Exner realized that this was not the behaviour of a normal lens, which forms an image on the opposite side of the axis from the entering ray. He worked out that the only optical structures capable of producing the required ray paths were two-lens devices, specifically two-lens inverting telescopes. However, the lenslike elements of superposition eyes lack the necessary power in their outer and inner refracting surfaces to operate as telescopes. Exner solved this by postulating that the elements have a lens cylinder structure with a gradient of refractive index capable of bending light rays continuously within the structure. This is similar to the apposition lens cylinder elements in the Limulus eye (see above Apposition eyes); the difference is that the telescope lenses would be twice as long. The lens cylinder arrangement produces the equivalent of a pair of lenses, with the first lens producing a small image halfway down the structure and the second lens turning the image back into a parallel beam. In the process the ray direction is reversed. Thus, the emerging beam is on the same side of the axis as the entering beam—the condition for obtaining a superposition image from the whole array. In the 1970s, studies using an interference microscope, a device capable of exploring the refractive index distribution in sections of minute objects, showed that Exner’s brilliant idea was accurate in all important details.
There is one group of animals with eyes that fit the anatomical criteria for superposition but that have optical elements that are not lenses or lens cylinders. These are the long-bodied decapod crustaceans, such as shrimps, prawns, crayfish, and lobsters. The optical structures are peculiar in that they have a square rather than a circular cross section, and they are made of homogeneous low-refractive index jelly. For a period of 20 years—between 1955, when interference microscopy showed that the jelly structures lacked appropriate refracting properties, and 1975, when the true nature of these structures was discovered—there was much confusion about how these eyes might function. Working with crayfish eyes, German neurobiologist Klaus Vogt found that these unpromising jelly boxes were silvered with a multilayer reflector coating. A set of plane mirrors, aligned at right angles to the eye surface, change the direction of rays (in much the same way as len cylinders), thereby producing a single erect image by superposition. The square arrangement of the mirrors has particular significance. Rays entering the eye at an oblique angle encounter two surfaces of each mirror box rather than one surface. In this case, the pair of mirrors at right angles acts as a corner reflector. Corner reflectors reflect an incoming ray through 180 degrees, irrespective of the ray’s original direction. As a result, the reflectors behave as though they were a single plane mirror at right angles to the ray. This ensures that all parallel rays reach the same focal point and means that the eye as a whole has no single axis, which allows the eye to operate over a wide angle.
The third type of superposition eye, discovered in 1988 in the crab genus Macropipus by Swedish zoologist Dan-Eric Nilsson, has optical elements that use a combination of a single lens and a parabolic mirror. The lens focuses an image near the top of the clear zone (similar to an apposition eye), but oblique rays are intercepted by a parabolic mirror surface that lines the crystalline cone beneath the lens. The parabolic mirror unfocuses the light and redirects it back across the axis of the structure, producing an emerging ray path similar to that of a refracting or reflecting superposition eye.
All three types of superposition eyes have adaptation mechanisms that restrict the amount of light reaching the retina in bright conditions. In most cases, light is restricted by the migration of dark pigment (held between the crystalline cones in the dark) into the clear zone; this cuts off the most oblique rays. However, as the pigment progresses inward, it cuts off more and more of the image-forming beam until only the central optical element supplies light to the rhabdom (located immediately below the central optical element). This effectively converts the superposition eye into an apposition eye, since in the dark-adapted condition up to a thousand facets may contribute to the image at any one point on the retina, potentially reducing the retinal illumination a thousandfold.
Optics of superposition eyes
Superposition optics requires that parallel rays from a large portion of the eye surface meet at a single point in the image. As a result, superposition eyes should have a simple spherical geometry, and, in fact, most superposition eyes in both insects and crustaceans are spherical. Some moth eyes do depart slightly from a spherical form, but it is in the euphausiid crustaceans (krill) from the mid-waters of the ocean that striking asymmetries are found. In many krill species the eyes are double. One part, with a small field of view, points upward, and a second part, with a wide field of view, points downward (similar to the apposition eyes of hyperiid amphipods). It is likely that the upper part is used to spot potential prey against the residual light from the sky, and the lower part scans the abyss for bioluminescent organisms. The most extraordinary double superposition eyes occur in the tropical mysid shrimp genus Dioptromysis, which has a normal-looking eye that contains a single enormous facet embedded in the back, with an equally large lens cylinder behind the facet. This single optical element supplies a fine-grain retina, which seems to act as the “fovea” of the eye as a whole. At certain times the eyes rotate so that the single facets are directed forward to view the scene ahead with higher resolution, much as one would use a pair of binoculars.