Re: Paper: Advanced optics in a jellyfish eye

"Robert Karl Stonjek" <rstonjek@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:d604nb$2oqc$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Nature 435, 201-205 (12 May 2005) | doi: 10.1038/nature03484
>
> Advanced optics in a jellyfish eye
> Dan-E. Nilsson1, Lars Gislén2, Melissa M. Coates1, Charlotta Skogh1 and
> Anders Garm1
>
> Top of pageCubozoans, or box jellyfish, differ from all other cnidarians
by
> an active fish-like behaviour and an elaborate sensory apparatus1, 2. Each
> of the four sides of the animal carries a conspicuous sensory club (the
> rhopalium), which has evolved into a bizarre cluster of different eyes3.
Two
> of the eyes on each rhopalium have long been known to resemble eyes of
> higher animals, but the function and performance of these eyes have
remained
> unknown4. Here we show that box-jellyfish lenses contain a finely tuned
> refractive index gradient producing nearly aberration-free imaging. This
> demonstrates that even simple animals have been able to evolve the
> sophisticated visual optics previously known only from a few advanced
> bilaterian phyla. However, the position of the retina does not coincide
with
> the sharp image, leading to very wide and complex receptive fields in
> individual photoreceptors. We argue that this may be useful in eyes
serving
> a single visual task. The findings indicate that tailoring of complex
> receptive fields might have been one of the original driving forces in the
> evolution of animal lenses.

I was not amazed or sustainably surprised by this reported finding.
Nor should anyone else be - at least not for more than a few seconds.
Though, admittedly, it opened my eyes to yet another new (at least new to
me)
'genophenotyped feature' of Reality.

P


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