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Determinants of visual pigment spectral location and photoreceptor cell spectral sensitivity

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Neurobiology and Clinical Aspects of the Outer Retina

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Abstract

What factors determine where the visual pigments of an animal will be spectrally located? This question remains a stimulus for scientific speculations and investigations today as it has for the last 120 years (see historical reviews in Crescitelli, 1991a,b). In the early 1970s, the umbrella term ‘Visual Ecology’ was coined to define more formally a specific approach to this and similar questions (e.g. why do animals have the number of visual pigments they do? or why do photoreceptor cells look the way they do?), which always take into account the visual tasks of an animal within a given photic environment.

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Authors
  1. Ellis R. Loew
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London, UK

    M. B. A. Djamgoz (Professor of Neurobiology) (Professor of Neurobiology)

  2. International Marine Centre, Oristano, Italy

    S. N. Archer (Senior Research Fellow) (Senior Research Fellow)

  3. Institute of Cybernetics and Biophysics, Italian National Research Council, Genoa, Italy

    S. Vallerga (Senior Researcher) (Senior Researcher)

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Loew, E.R. (1995). Determinants of visual pigment spectral location and photoreceptor cell spectral sensitivity. In: Djamgoz, M.B.A., Archer, S.N., Vallerga, S. (eds) Neurobiology and Clinical Aspects of the Outer Retina. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0533-0_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0533-0_3

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