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Photoreception and Vision in Invertebrates pp 699–725Cite as

Molluscs

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Part of the book series: NATO ASI Series ((NSSA,volume 74))

Abstract

The molluscs show every type of eye design from the most simple of eye-cups in limpets to the fish-like lens eyes of squid and octopus, which are every bit as sophisticated as their vertebrate parallels. Even in the bivalves, not a group renowned for their eyesight, there have been a number of curious evolutionary experiments. Thus in scallops one finds eyes that use mirrors rather than lenses to form the image, and in Area and its relatives the mantle bears many small compound eyes not very different from the apposition eyes of insects or sabellid tube worms. These are essentially evolutionary “one-offs” which led nowhere, but which provided their bearers with the ability to respond to moving predators before they are close enough to cast a direct shadow.

Shadow responses, which one finds in bivalve clams and some gastropods, turn out to be generated in a way that is possibly unique in the animal kingdom, in that the photoreceptors that mediate them are primary “off” receptors which hyperpolarise in the light and discharge when the light dims or is turned off. It is ironic that this was discovered Pecten by Hartline in 1938 30 years before it was suspected that vertebrate photoreceptors might behave in a not very different way. The more usual kind of depolarising receptor is also found, usually in the true cephalic eyes of both gastropods and cephalopods. The “off” receptors tend to be highly ciliated and the “on” receptors microvillous, though what this means physiologically is still an interesting open question

In both gastropods and cephalopods the main line of evolutionary development has been in the direction of optically high quality lens eyes. Snails like Helix have only a soft, weakly refracting lens, but in the winkle Littorina this has become hard and inhomogeneous, and has a ratio of focal length to radius of about 2,5 (Matthiessen’s ratio) characteristic of the aplanatic lenses of fish eyes. In the strombids this kind of eye can be quite large — a mm or more — with potentially excellent resolutions (I °), though no-one knows what the eyes are used for. The heteropods are even more intriguing, having fish-like eyes with long narrow retinae only a few cells wide. It now seems that they make scanning eye movements, sweeping through the visual surroundings so that the narrow retina acts as a single like on the TV scan.

Parallels between cephalopod and fish eyes are legendary. They both have Matthiessen’s ratio lenses, mobile pupils and a full complement of eye-movements. The receptors, though, are quite different, and there is no suggestion of colour vision in cephalopods or any other mollusc. Nautilus is a real oddity. How did it last that long with only pinhole optics?

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biological Sciences, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QG, England

    M. F. Land

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  1. University of Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

    M. A. Ali

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© 1984 Plenum Press, New York

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Land, M.F. (1984). Molluscs. In: Ali, M.A. (eds) Photoreception and Vision in Invertebrates. NATO ASI Series, vol 74. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2743-1_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2743-1_20

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