Colour vision as an adaptation to frugivory in primates
@article{Osorio1996ColourVA,
title={Colour vision as an adaptation to frugivory in primates},
author={Daniel C. Osorio and Misha Vorobyev},
journal={Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences},
year={1996},
volume={263},
pages={593 - 599}
}Most mammals possess two classes of cone, sensitive to short and to long wavelengths of light, but Old World primates (Catarrhini) have distinct medium and long wavelength sensitive classes. The sensitivities of these cones photopigments are alike in all catarrhines with peaks at about 440 nm (‘blue’), 533 nm (‘green’) and 565 nm (‘red’). One possible reason for the evolution and conservatism of catarrhine trichromacy is that colour vision is a specialization for finding food. A model of…
413 Citations
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Four trichromatic primate species in Kibale Forest, Uganda, eat leaves that are colour discriminated only by red–greenness, a colour axis correlated with high protein levels and low toughness, which implicate leaf consumption, a critical food resource when fruit is scarce, as having unique value in maintaining trichromeacy in catarrhines.
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Comparing different types of color vision for detecting more than 100 plant species consumed by tamarins in Peru shows evidence that both frequency‐dependent selection on homozygotes and heterozygote advantage favor M/L polymorphism and that trichromatic color vision is most advantageous in dim light.
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The results suggest that luminance contrast can serve as an important cue in short-range foraging attempts despite other sensory cues that could be available and the advantage of red-green color vision in primates may not be as salient as previously thought.
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The uniform trichromacy of Alouatta is known to have arisen separately from that of catarrhines, perhaps from a polymorphic arrangement similar to that seen in other platyrrhines.
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Comparative studies of mammalian eyes indicate that primates are the only placental mammals that have in their retina a pre-existing neural machinery capable of utilising the signals of an additional spectral type of cone, and the failure of non-primate placental mammal mammals to evolve trichromacy can be explained by constraints imposed on the wiring of retinal neurones.
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Primates have an additional colour channel enabling trichromatic vision via a duplication and divergence of the L opsin gene, resulting in long and middle wavelength-sensitive photopigments, which permits enhanced discrimination of light and perception of different shades of green, yellow, orange and red.
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Red-green color blindness is not associated with loss of acuity, although this is present in a rare form of dichromacy called Bornholm eye disease where cone dysfunction and myopia is also present, and the recessive disorder of achromatopsia where all cone classes may be absent.
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The mechanism leading to trichromacy, with one exception, is based on a single polymorphic LWS gene, from which different allelic variants encode pigments with differing spectral peaks.
Catarrhine photopigments are optimized for detecting targets against a foliage background.
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- 2000
By treating the task of searching for food as a signal-detection task, it is shown that, of all possible combinations of cone sensitivities, the spectral positions of the actual primate pigments are optimal for finding fruit or young leaves against the background of mature leaves.
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New World monkeys can serve as an excellent model to understand and evaluate the adaptive significance of primate trichromacy in a behavioral context and are introduced to introduce the genetic and behavioral study of vision–behavior interrelationships in free-ranging sympatric capuchin and spider monkey populations in Costa Rica.
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