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Visual pigments of fishes

  • Chapter
The Visual System of Fish

Abstract

The oceans, lakes and rivers of the world offer a vast and highly diverse environment, varying in many aspects such as depth, salinity, temperature, clarity and colour. In terms of the visual performance of animals within this environment, it is of course the optical properties of the water, and the effect of suspended and dissolved substances within it, that are significant (Chapter 1). It is these characteristics that will dictate to a large extent the photic environment of any given fish population, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that the visual system of a given species will be adapted to this environment. The supposition can be extended to include the photoreceptor cells of the retina: the spectral sensitivity of the rods and cones presumably will be tuned in some respect to the available spectral irradiance.

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Authors
  1. James K. Bowmaker
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Optometry and Visual Science, City University, London, UK

    Ron Douglas

  2. Department of Pure and Applied Biology, Imperial College, London, UK

    Mustafa Djamgoz

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© 1990 Chapman and Hall

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Bowmaker, J.K. (1990). Visual pigments of fishes. In: Douglas, R., Djamgoz, M. (eds) The Visual System of Fish. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-0411-8_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-0411-8_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-010-6672-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-009-0411-8

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