The glow in trilobite eyes
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biophysics, Paleontology
- Keywords
- Vision, Trilobite, Arthropod, UV-radiation, Luminescene, Optics, Compound Eye, Cambrian explosion, Palaeozoic, Calcite
- Copyright
- © 2015 Schoenemann et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2015. The glow in trilobite eyes. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e1288v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1288v1
Abstract
Trilobites are extinct marine arthropods that dominated the faunas of the Palaeozoic. They were equipped with highly differentiated compound eyes. By contrast with all other arthropods, the lenses of these compound eyes were of pure calcite. Calcite shows photoluminescence under short-waved light. Here we show the phenomenon that in trilobite eyes the lenses glow under black-light illumination (UVA 365nm). Any inhomogenous distribution of light patterns across the lattice of facets in their compound eye, which is caused by an non homogenous UV-pattern inside the environment, would give orientational information to the trilobite. While many modern arthropods developed specialised UV-photoreceptor cells, the blue greenish light of the UV-induced fluorescence in the optical systems of the trilobites works without such modifications. We propose a new specialised optical system, ~400 million years old which is unique in the animal realm, and may be a role model for present technical applications.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.