J Exp Biol Advance Online Articles. First posted online on 15 June 2016 as doi:10.1242/jeb.139501 Access the most recent version at http://jeb.biologists.org/lookup/doi/10.1242/jeb.139501 From crypsis to mimicry: changes in colour and the configuration of the visual system during ontogenetic habitat transitions in a coral reef fish Fabio Cortesi1,2,3*, Zuzana Musilová3,4, Sara M. Stieb1, Nathan S. Hart5, Ulrike E. Siebeck6, Karen L. Cheney2, Walter Salzburger3,7, N. Justin Marshall1 1Queensland Brain Institute and 2School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, Australia. 3Zoological Institute, University of Basel, Basel 4051, Switzerland. 4Department of Zoology, Charles University in Prague, 128 44 Prague, Czech Republic. 5Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW 2109, Australia. 6School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, Australia 7Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis, Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo 0316, Norway *Correspondence to:
[email protected] Keywords: vision, development, gene duplication, opsin, colour change, coexpression Journal of Experimental Biology • Advance article © 2016. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd. SUMMARY The dusky dottyback goes through various cryptic stages and modifications of its visual system before turning into one of the most successful fish mimics on tropical coral reefs. ABSTRACT Animals often change their habitat throughout ontogeny; yet, the triggers for habitat transitions and how these correlate with developmental changes – e.g. physiological, morphological, and behavioural – remain largely unknown. Here, we investigated how ontogenetic changes in body colouration and of the visual system relate to habitat transitions in a coral-reef fish.