...Matthew B. Toomey; Kelly L. Ronald ABSTRACT Carotenoids color many of the red, orange and yellow ornaments of birds and also shape avian vision. The carotenoid-pigmented oil droplets in cone photoreceptors filter incoming light and are predicted to aid in color discrimination. Carotenoid use...

...David Wilby; Nicholas W. Roberts ABSTRACT Oil droplets are spherical organelles found in the cone photoreceptors of vertebrates. They are generally assumed to focus incident light into the outer segment, and thereby improve light catch because of the droplets' spherical lens-like shape. However...

... sensitivity might be reduced by chromatic aberration and entrance of UV radiation into the eye could be detrimental to retinal tissues. To investigate the whooping crane visual system we used microspectrophotometry to determine the absorbance spectra of retinal oil droplets and to investigate whether...

... and close to 362 nm. The two longer-wave-sensitive single cones contained brightly coloured oil droplets which cut off light below 572 and 514 nm, respectively. The 449 nm λ max pigment was associated with a ‘colourless’ oil droplet with peak measured absorptance below 400 nm. The ultraviolet-sensitive...