Meeting Abstract
Understanding how individual photoreceptor cells factor in the spectral sensitivity of a visual system is essential to explain how they contribute to the visual ecology of the animal in question. Various methods that model the absorbance of visual pigments use templates which correspond closely to data from thin cross-sections of photoreceptor cells. However, few modeling approaches which compare optimized models incorporate physical parameters of real photoreceptors, which can be fused, and can form vertical tiers. Here, I employ Akaike’s Information Criterion (AIC) to select absorptance models of multiple classes of photoreceptor cells that maximize information, given visual system spectral sensitivity data and histological parameters. This technique correctly selects among alternative models, and identifies between one and four spectral classes for the dark-acclimated visual systems of the velvet worm, Principapillatus hitoyensis, the branchiopod water flea, Daphnia magna, and humans. I also include data from the Asian swallowtail, Papilio xuthus, which has at least five main spectral photoreceptor classes in its compound eyes, to illustrate potential effects of model oversimplification on multi-model inference. This technique will be informative for future opsin expression studies and to support extracellular or intracellular electroretinography.
