bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/017756; this version posted October 26, 2015. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. Spectral Discrimination in “Color Blind” Animals via Chromatic Aberration and Pupil Shape Alexander L. Stubbs1*†, Christopher W. Stubbs2† 1Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley CA, USA. 2Departments of Physics and of Astronomy, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, USA. *Correspondence to:
[email protected]. † Both authors contributed equally to the writing of the manuscript. Abstract We present a mechanism by which organisms with only a single photoreceptor, that have a monochromatic view of the world, can achieve color discrimination. The combination of an off- axis pupil and the principle of chromatic aberration (where light of different colors focus at different distances behind a lens) can combine to provide “color-blind” animals with a way to distinguish colors. As a specific example we constructed a computer model of the visual system of cephalopods, (octopus, squid, and cuttlefish) that have a single unfiltered photoreceptor type. Nevertheless, cephalopods dramatically change color both to produce chromatically-matched camouflage and to signal conspecifics. This presents a paradox – an apparent ability to determine color in organisms with a monochromatic visual system – that has been a long-standing puzzle. We demonstrate that chromatic blurring dominates the visual acuity in these animals, and we quantitatively show how chromatic aberration can be exploited, especially through non-axial pupils that are characteristic of cephalopods, to obtain spectral information.