Affiliation:
1. Marine Biological Section, University of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 4, 2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark
2. Greenland Climate Research Centre, Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, Kivioq 2, 3900 Nuuk, Greenland
Abstract
Asteroids, starfish, are important members of the macro-benthos in almost all marine environments including the deep sea. Starfish are in general assumed to be largely olfactory guided, but recent studies have shown that two tropical shallow water species rely on vision alone to find their habitat at short distances. Their compound eyes are found at the tip of each arm and they vary little between examined species. Still, nothing is known about vision in the species found in the aphotic zone of the deep sea or whether they even have eyes. Here, 13 species of starfish from Greenland waters, covering a depth range from shallow waters to the deep sea below 1000 m, were examined for the presence of eyes and optical and morphological examinations were used to estimate the quality of vision. Further, species found in the aphotic zone below 320 m were checked for bioluminescence. All species, except the infaunal
Ctenodiscus crispatus
, had eyes, and two were found to be bioluminescent. Interestingly, one of the species found in the aphotic zone,
Novodinia americana
, had close to the highest spatial resolution known for starfish eyes along with being bioluminescent. Accordingly, we hypothesize that this species communicates visually using bioluminescent flashes putatively for reproductive purposes. Other species have greatly enhanced sensitivity with few large ommatidia but at the sacrifice of spatial resolution. The discovery of eyes in deep-sea starfish with a huge variation in optical quality and sensitivity indicates that their visual ecology also differs greatly.
Funder
Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, North Atlantic Cooperation
Ministry of Environment and Food of Denmark
Subject
General Agricultural and Biological Sciences,General Environmental Science,General Immunology and Microbiology,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology,General Medicine
Cited by
10 articles.
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