Ciliary and rhabdomeric photoreceptor-cell circuits form a spectral depth gauge in marine zooplankton
- Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Germany
- Emory University, United States
- University of Vienna, Austria
Abstract
Ciliary and rhabdomeric photoreceptor cells represent two main lines of photoreceptor-cell evolution in animals. The two cell types coexist in some animals, however how these cells functionally integrate is unknown. We used connectomics to map synaptic paths between ciliary and rhabdomeric photoreceptors in the planktonic larva of the annelid Platynereis and found that ciliary photoreceptors are presynaptic to the rhabdomeric circuit. The behaviors mediated by the ciliary and rhabdomeric cells also interact hierarchically. The ciliary photoreceptors are UV-sensitive and mediate downward swimming in non-directional UV light, a behavior absent in ciliary-opsin knockout larvae. UV avoidance overrides positive phototaxis mediated by the rhabdomeric eyes such that vertical swimming direction is determined by the ratio of blue/UV light. Since this ratio increases with depth, Platynereis larvae may use it as a depth gauge during vertical migration. Our results revealed a functional integration of ciliary and rhabdomeric photoreceptor cells in a zooplankton larva.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files. Source data files have been provided for Figures 1, 3 and 4 and Figure 2-figure supplement 2.
Article and author information
Author details
Vinoth Babu Veedin Rajan
Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- Luis A Bezares-Calderón
National Institutes of Health
- Vinoth Babu Veedin Rajan
- Shozo Yokoyama
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (Open-access funding)
- Gáspár Jékely
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2018, Verasztó et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Ciliary and rhabdomeric photoreceptor-cell circuits form a spectral depth gauge in marine zooplankton
eLife 7:e36440.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.36440
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