Meeting Abstract
Adult stomatopods have complex eyes that are specialized for color and polarization vision. Up to 16 different photoreceptors and as many as 33 expressed opsin transcripts are active in the visual system of adult stomatopods, presenting unparalleled opsin diversity within an individual animal. Whether this diversity exists in the larval stomatopod eye as well has yet to be studied. During development, larval stomatopod eyes rapidly transition from a simple compound eye to a double-retina stage, in which the larval retina and adult retina coexist, before the larval retina degrades and the adult retina is completed. The adult eye of the stomatopod has three sections; dorsal and ventral lobes divided generally by six rows of enlarged ommatidia. In contrast to other stomatopod species, Alima pacifica have only two midband rows; this reduced adult eye allows us to elucidate relationships between eye development, complexity, and related molecular components. We analyzed retinal transcriptomes of A. pacifica adults and last-stage larvae with double retinas, with larval and adult retinal tissues separated by dissection prior to analysis. RNA sequencing was performed using the Illumina platform and raw reads were assembled in Trinity. Phototransduction genes were identified using Phylogenetically-Informed Annotation. Eight opsins expressed in larval tissue and 10 opsins expressed in developing adult retinal tissue. Multiple transcripts for other phototransduction components were also found. These data support previous hypotheses that opsin gene duplication events in stomatopods have occurred recently and frequently. Despite having only two midband rows, the level of complexity in the phototransduction pathway of A. pacifica is higher than the characterized number of photoreceptors would suggest.
