The Blurry Beginnings: What nature’s strangest eyes tell us about the evolution of vision

Our study reveals the most elaborate opsin expression patterns ever described in any animal eye. In mantis shrimp, a pugnacious crustacean renowned for its visual sophistication, we found unexpected retinal expression patterns highlighting the potential for cryptic photoreceptor functional diversity, including single photoreceptors that coexpress opsins from different spectral clades and a single opsin with a putative nonvisual function important in color vision. This study demonstrates the evolutionary potential for increasing visual system functional diversity through opsin gene duplication and diversification, as well as changes in patterns of gene coexpression among photoreceptors and retinula cells. These results have significant implications for the function of other visual systems, particularly in arthropods where large numbers of retinally expressed opsins have been documented.