Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

CRUSTACEAN EYE-STALK HORMONE AND RETINAL PIGMENT MIGRATION

1936; Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL); Volume: 70; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1537465

1939-8697

L. H. Kleinholz,

Aquatic Ecosystems and Phytoplankton Dynamics

1. Specimens of Palæmonetes vulgaris which had been exposed to light so that their retinal pigments were in positions characteristic for that state were injected with crustacean eye-stalk extract, in one series prepared from animals that had been in the dark-room overnight, and in a second series prepared from specimens that had been kept on a black background. There was no significant change in the position of the distal retinal pigment cells in either series. 2. When, stalk extracts were prepared from light-adapted animals and were injected, in the dark, into Palæmonetes in which the retinal pigments were adapted to darkness, a proximal migration of the distal retinal pigment occurred towards the position found typically in the eyes of specimens adapted to light. 3. If the rate of distal pigment migration following experimental injection is plotted, a sigmoid curve is obtained similar to that found by Welsh for the normal rate of migration when a single individual adapts to light. 4. Histological study of the eyes of experimentally injected Palæmonetes shows that the reflecting pigment as well as the distal pigment has migrated into a position typical for a light-adapted eye. The proximal retinal pigment apparently undergoes no change in position. 5. Stalk extracts which were prepared from animals that were adapted to darkness, and which were injected into dark-adapted Palæmonetes, in the dark-room, proved to be only half as potent as extracts prepared from the eyes of light-adapted shrimps. 6. Extracts of eye-stalks from Cancer irroratus, Libinia dubia, Uca pugilator, and Carcinides mænas, when injected into Palæmonetes which were adapted to darkness, also effected migrations of the distal and the reflecting retinal pigments. Stalk extracts from the eyes of Callinectes sapidus, in the concentrations used, had no effect on the retinal pigments of the test animals.