Evolution and selection of trichromatic vision in primates

By A. Surridge, D. Osorio, Nicholas I. Mundy. 2003

291 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Trichromatic colour vision is of considerable importance to primates but is absent in other eutherian mammals. Primate colour vision is traditionally believed to have evolved for finding food in the forest. Recent work has tested the ecological importance of trichromacy to primates, both by measuring the spectral and chemical properties of food eaten in the wild, and by testing the relative foraging abilities of dichromatic and trichromatic primates. Molecular studies have revealed the genetic mechanisms of the evolution of trichromacy, and are providing new insight into visual pigment gene expression and colour vision defects. By drawing together work from these different fields, we can gain a better understanding of how natural selection has shaped the evolution of trichromatic colour vision in primates and also about mechanisms of gene duplication, heterozygote advantage and balancing selection.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Molecular Biology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ec54acbdd8d706b75f6e11431c523e71c7a9663d

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Citations in the corpus

Evolutionary Biology of Animal Cognition (2004, background): “Rather, the L gene is polymorphic and encodes distinct L and M photopigments, creating trichromatic vision in heterozygous females but dichromatic vision in all other individuals (Jacobs 1998, Nathans 1999, Surridge et al. 2003).”
A Multi-Forest Comparison of Dietary Preferences and Seed Dispersal by Ateles spp (2005, background): “These differences between New and Old World primates may be related to their dichromatic versus trichromatic vision, respectively (Surridge et al., 2003).”
Extending mind, visuospatial integration, and the evolution of the parietal lobes in the human genus (2016, background): “Vision too has a special meaning for primates, specifically for anthropoids, as mammals that changed from a night world made up of sounds and smells to a day-life based on colors and shapes (e.g., Jacobs, 1996; Heesy and Ross, 2001; Surridge et al., 2003).”
Sexual Skin Color Contains Information About the Timing of the Fertile Phase in Free-ranging Macaca mulatta (2009, background): “In contrast, few studies have investigated the potential link between female fertility and red skin coloration (Bradley and Mundy 2008), even though catarrhine species are trichromats and thus perceive red (Surridge et al. 2003; Waitt and Buchanan-Smith 2006), and that researchers have proposed colo”
Evolutionary Consequences of Fallback Foods (2007, background): “Similarly, although primatologists often consider color vision in Old World primates to be an adaptation to finding ripe fruits (Regan et al. 2001; Surridge et al. 2003) —as our framework would expect, because vision can be viewed as a harvesting adaptation— a plausible case can be made to support i”