TY - JOUR
T1 - Molecular palaeontology illuminates the evolution of ecdysozoan vision
AU - Fleming, James F.
AU - Kristensen, Reinhardt Møbjerg
AU - Sørensen, Martin Vinther
AU - Park, Tae Yoon S.
AU - Arakawa, Kazuharu
AU - Blaxter, Mark
AU - Rebecchi, Lorena
AU - Guidetti, Roberto
AU - Williams, Tom A.
AU - Roberts, Nicholas W.
AU - Vinther, Jakob
AU - Pisani, Davide
N1 - Funding Information:
J.F.F. was supported by a NERC GW4þ PhD studentship, R.G. and L.R. were supported by a FAR2017DIP grant by the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy), K.A. was supported by a KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)—grant no. 17H03620, and partly by research funds from the Yamagata Prefec-tural Government and Tsuruoka City, Japan, T.A.W. is supported by a Royal Society University Research Fellowship and NERC grant NE/P00251X/1, R.M.K. was supported by a Carlsberg Foundation grant CF-16–0236.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 The Authors.
PY - 2018/12/5
Y1 - 2018/12/5
N2 - Colour vision is known to have arisen only twice—once in Vertebrata and once within the Ecdysozoa, in Arthropoda. However, the evolutionary history of ecdysozoan vision is unclear. At the molecular level, visual pigments, composed of a chromophore and a protein belonging to the opsin family, have different spectral sensitivities and these mediate colour vision. At the morphological level, ecdysozoan vision is conveyed by eyes of variable levels of complexity; from the simple ocelli observed in the velvet worms (phylum Onychophora) to the marvellously complex eyes of insects, spiders, and crustaceans. Here, we explore the evolution of ecdysozoan vision at both the molecular and morphological level; combining analysis of a large-scale opsin dataset that includes previously unknown ecdysozoan opsins with morphological analyses of key Cambrian fossils with preserved eye structures. We found that while several non-arthropod ecdysozoan lineages have multiple opsins, arthropod multi-opsin vision evolved through a series of gene duplications that were fixed in a period of 35 – 71 million years (Ma) along the stem arthropod lineage. Our integrative study of the fossil and molecular record of vision indicates that fossils with more complex eyes were likely to have possessed a larger complement of opsin genes.
AB - Colour vision is known to have arisen only twice—once in Vertebrata and once within the Ecdysozoa, in Arthropoda. However, the evolutionary history of ecdysozoan vision is unclear. At the molecular level, visual pigments, composed of a chromophore and a protein belonging to the opsin family, have different spectral sensitivities and these mediate colour vision. At the morphological level, ecdysozoan vision is conveyed by eyes of variable levels of complexity; from the simple ocelli observed in the velvet worms (phylum Onychophora) to the marvellously complex eyes of insects, spiders, and crustaceans. Here, we explore the evolution of ecdysozoan vision at both the molecular and morphological level; combining analysis of a large-scale opsin dataset that includes previously unknown ecdysozoan opsins with morphological analyses of key Cambrian fossils with preserved eye structures. We found that while several non-arthropod ecdysozoan lineages have multiple opsins, arthropod multi-opsin vision evolved through a series of gene duplications that were fixed in a period of 35 – 71 million years (Ma) along the stem arthropod lineage. Our integrative study of the fossil and molecular record of vision indicates that fossils with more complex eyes were likely to have possessed a larger complement of opsin genes.
KW - Evolution
KW - Opsin
KW - Phylogeny
KW - Vision
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U2 - 10.1098/rspb.2018.2180
DO - 10.1098/rspb.2018.2180
M3 - Article
C2 - 30518575
AN - SCOPUS:85058333607
SN - 0962-8452
VL - 285
JO - Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
JF - Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
IS - 1892
M1 - 20182180
ER -