Gonodactylus
Premium Member
I'm often asked why I have spent most of my adult life studying stomatopods. My usual answer is a quick "Because they are so neat and they live in such great places!" However, push me harder on the subject and you will probably be subjected to a rather boring dissertation on the virtues of basic research and how we never know when and from where the next useful discovery will come.
Enter this morning's lead science story in many papers and science blogs lifted from the latest issue of Nature Photonics - what does a mantis shrimp and a DVD have in common? My lab, along with those of Tom Cronin, Justin Marshall and Nick Roberts have been looking at circular polarized vision and signaling in odontodactylids for the past few years. O. cultrifer is the only animal on the planet (except for humans using technology) known to be able to see and produce circularly polarized signals. That's nice - but so what? It turns out that Nick and his colleagues have shown that the eye of the stomatopod has as one component of the CPL analyzing system a quarter wave retarder plate that is achromatic over the entire visual spectrum. It considerably out performs anything humans have been able to design and build. All human designed quarter wave retarders work most effectively over a very limited spectral range which limits the amount of information that things like your DVD can store and process. Stomatopods have shown us how to greatly and efficiently expand that capability. So, in a few years when you are watching a much crisper DVD image, thank the Odontodactylids that gave up their eyes so that you might have better images to see.
Roy
Enter this morning's lead science story in many papers and science blogs lifted from the latest issue of Nature Photonics - what does a mantis shrimp and a DVD have in common? My lab, along with those of Tom Cronin, Justin Marshall and Nick Roberts have been looking at circular polarized vision and signaling in odontodactylids for the past few years. O. cultrifer is the only animal on the planet (except for humans using technology) known to be able to see and produce circularly polarized signals. That's nice - but so what? It turns out that Nick and his colleagues have shown that the eye of the stomatopod has as one component of the CPL analyzing system a quarter wave retarder plate that is achromatic over the entire visual spectrum. It considerably out performs anything humans have been able to design and build. All human designed quarter wave retarders work most effectively over a very limited spectral range which limits the amount of information that things like your DVD can store and process. Stomatopods have shown us how to greatly and efficiently expand that capability. So, in a few years when you are watching a much crisper DVD image, thank the Odontodactylids that gave up their eyes so that you might have better images to see.
Roy
