| 1. |
- Håstad, Olle, 1971-
(författare)
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Plumage Colours and the Eye of the Beholder : The Ecology of Colour and its Perception in Birds
- 2003
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Virtually all diurnal birds have tetrachomatic vision based on four different colour receptors. As a result, birds are potentially able to perceive their environment in twice as many colours as humans and four times as many colours compared to most other mammals, which are dichromatic. In addition to the spectrum visible to humans, birds are able to detect ultraviolet (UV) light. Signals with a UV component have been shown to be important to birds both in foraging and colour signalling. Because of the superior colour discrimination of the avian eye, UV sensitivity, but especially owing to its tetrachromacy, we cannot know what birds look like to those that matter, i.e. other birds.In my thesis I describe a new molecular method with which it is possible to identify the vision system of birds only using a small amount of DNA, without the need to keep or sacrifice the animal. It thereby facilitates large screenings, including rare and endangered species. The method has been used to increase the number of species with identified vision system type from 19 to 66. I show that raptors and songbirds have different vision systems, giving songbirds the possibility of a secret channel for colour signalling, and that male songbirds in coniferous forest take advantage of this to be significantly more cryptic to raptors than to females songbirds. I show that gulls have gained a vision system enabling them to detect the UV signals of fish when the fish swim close to the surface.Even though we tend to be rather self-satisfied with the quality of our colour vision, we are colour-blind when compared to birds. My work shows that human colour vision is inadequate for judging animal coloration, and that there is much more going on in bird colour signalling than meets our eye.
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| 2. |
- Håstad, Olle, 1971-, et al.
(författare)
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Ultraviolet photopigment sensitivity and ocular media transmittance in gulls, with an evolutionary perspective
- 2009
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Ingår i: Journal of Comparative Physiology A. Sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0340-7594 .- 1432-1351. ; 195:6, s. 585-590
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Gulls (Laridae excluding Sternidae) appear to be the only shorebirds (Charadriiformes) that have a short wavelength sensitive type 1 (SWS1) cone pigment opsin tuned to ultraviolet (UV) instead of violet. However, the apparent UV-sensitivity has only been inferred indirectly, via the interpretation that the presence of cysteine at the key amino acid position 90 in the SWS1 opsin confers UV sensitivity. Unless the cornea and the lens efficiently transmit UV to the retina, gulls might in effect be similar to violet-sensitive birds in spectral sensitivity even if they have an ultraviolet sensitive (UVS) SWS1 visual pigment. We report that the spectral transmission of the cornea and lens of great black-backed Larus marinus and herring gulls L. argentatus allow UV-sensitivity, having a λ value, 344 nm, similar to the ocular media of UV sensitive birds. By molecular sequencing of the second α-helical transmembrane region of the SWS1 opsin gene we could also infer that 15 herring gulls and 16 yellow-legged gulls L. michahellis, all base-pair identical, are genetically UV-sensitive.
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| 3. |
- Ödeen, Anders, 1969-, et al.
(författare)
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Assessing the use of genomic DNA as a predictor of the maximum absorbance wavelength of avian SWS1 opsin visual pigments
- 2009
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Ingår i: Journal of Comparative Physiology A. Sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0340-7594 .- 1432-1351. ; 195:2, s. 167-173
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recently, in vitro mutation studies have made it possible to predict the wavelengths of maximum absorbance (λmax) of avian UV/violet sensitive visual pigments (SWS1) from the identity of a few key amino acid residues in the opsin gene. Given that the absorbance spectrum of a cone's visual pigment and of its pigmented oil droplet can be predicted from just the λmax, it may become possible to predict the entire spectral sensitivity of a bird using genetic samples from live birds or museum specimens. However, whilst this concept is attractive, it must be validated to assess the reliability of the predictions of λmax from opsin amino acid sequences. In this paper, we have obtained partial sequences covering three of the known spectral tuning sites in the SWS1 opsin and predicted λmax of all bird species for which the spectral absorbance has been measured using microspectrophotometry. Our results validate the use of molecular data from genomic DNA to predict the gross differences in λmax between the violet- and ultraviolet-sensitive subtypes of SWS1 opsin. Additionally, we demonstrate that a bird, the bobolink Dolichonyx oryzivorus L., can have more than one SWS1 visual pigment in its retina.
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| 4. |
- Ödeen, Anders, et al.
(författare)
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Evolution of ultraviolet vision in shorebirds (Charadriiformes)
- 2010
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Ingår i: Biology Letters. - : The Royal Society. - 1744-9561 .- 1744-957X. ; 6:3, s. 370-374
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Diurnal birds belong to one of two classes of colour vision. These are distinguished by the maximum absorbance wavelengths of the SWS1 visual pigment sensitive to violet (VS) and ultraviolet (UVS). Shifts between the classes have been rare events during avian evolution. Gulls (Laridae) are the only shorebirds (Charadriiformes) previously reported to have the UVS type of opsin, but too few species have been sampled to infer that gulls are unique among shorebirds or that Laridae is monomorphic for this trait. We have sequenced the SWS1 opsin gene in a broader sample of species. We confirm that cysteine in the key amino acid position 90, characteristic of the UVS class, has been conserved throughout gull evolution but also that the terns Anous minutus, A. tenuirostris and Gygis alba, and the skimmer Rynchops niger carry this trait. Terns, excluding Anous and Gygis, share the VS conferring serine in position 90 with other shorebirds but it is translated from a codon more similar to that found in UVS shorebirds. The most parsimonious interpretation of these findings, based on a molecular gene tree, is a single VS to UVS shift and a subsequent reversal in one lineage.
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| 5. |
- Ödeen, Anders, 1969-, et al.
(författare)
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New Primers for the Avian SWS1 Pigment Opsin Gene Reveal New Amino Acid Configurations in Spectral Sensitivity Tuning Sites
- 2009
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Ingår i: Journal of Heredity. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0022-1503 .- 1465-7333. ; 100:6, s. 784-789
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recently, polymerase chain reaction-based estimates of visual pigment spectral tuning from genomic DNA have offered an alternative to the authoritative but rather slow and complicated retinal microspectrophotometry method. The genomic DNA method involves sequencing a fragment of the short-wavelength sensitive pigment, type 1 (SWS1) opsin gene covering amino acid positions 86, 90, and 93 and has been utilized in a wide range of avian species. Other key tuning sites have been proposed but not sequenced in the genomic DNA-based spectral sensitivity studies. We have designed 5 new primers for sequencing gene fragments of the ultraviolet-/violet-tuned SWS1 opsin gene containing the first, second and third, and sixth and seventh α-helical transmembrane regions and the spectral tuning sites 49, 86, 90, 93, 116, 118 and 298. Testing these primers on various bird species reveals some novel combinations of amino acid residues at the tuning sites. The potential significance of these on spectral tuning is discussed.
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| 6. |
- Ödeen, Anders, 1969-, et al.
(författare)
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Pollinating birds differ in spectral sensitivity
- 2010
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Ingår i: Journal of Comparative Physiology A. Sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0340-7594 .- 1432-1351. ; 196:2, s. 91-96
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Pollinating animals and their angiosperm hosts often show strong co-adaptation in traits that increase the likelihood of a successful transfer of pollen and nutrient rewards. One such adaptation is the reported colour difference caused by unequal distribution of anthocyanidin pigments amongst plant species visited by hummingbirds and passerines. This phenomenon has been suggested to reflect possible differences in the colour vision of these pollinating birds. The presence of any such difference in colour vision would arguably affect the ecological and evolutionary interactions between flowers and their visitors, accentuating differences in floral displays and attractiveness of plants to the favoured avian pollinators. We have tested for differences in colour vision, as indicated by the amino acid present at certain key positions in the short-wavelength-sensitive type 1 (SWS1) visual pigment opsin, between the major groups of pollinating birds: the non-passerine Trochilidae (hummingbirds), the passerine Meliphagidae (honeyeaters) and Nectariniidae (sunbirds) plus five other Passerida passerine families. The results reveal gross spectral sensitivity differences between hummingbirds and honeyeaters, on the one hand, and the Passerida species, on the other.
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