Vision in Fish

This chapter reviews the current understanding of vision in fish in relation to the complement of visual pigments and photoreceptors in the retina of fish. The emphasis is on the evolution of visual pigments and color vision and how this may relate to visual function. The role of visual pigment gene duplication and gene loss is discussed. The chapter covers all of the major fish groups from primitive jawless lamprey to teleost and lungfish. The adaptive significance of ontogenetic changes and the differential expression of visual pigment opsin genes are discussed in relation to changes in visual function. A model is used to predict the best-fit visual pigments for the simple task of prey detection by fish in different photic environments.