Daily Mail: Meet a colorful but colorblind spider

The UK Daily Mail highlighted research by the University of Cincinnati and an international team of scientists looking at the vision of a colorful jumping spider.

UC College of Arts and Sciences biologist Nathan Morehouse and former UC postdoctoral researcher David Outomuro worked with researchers in Europe to examine Saitis barbipes, a jumping spider with vibrant red markings on its face and legs.

“We assumed they were using color for communication. But we didn’t know if their visual system even allowed them to see those colors,” said David Outomuro, a UC postdoctoral researcher now at the University of Pittsburgh.

Biologists collected spiders in Slovenia for lab study in Germany and used microspectrophotometry at UC to identify photoreceptors sensitive to various light wavelengths or colors. Unexpectedly, they found no evidence of a red photoreceptor. Likewise, they looked for colored filters within the eye that might shift green sensitivity to red, but found none.

Instead, they identified patches on the spider that strongly absorb ultraviolet wavelengths to appear as bright “spider green” to other jumping spiders. The red colors that are so vivid to us likely appear no different than black markings to jumping spiders.

“It’s a bit of a head-scratcher what’s going on here,” professor Morehouse said. “We haven’t solved the mystery of what the red is doing.”

The study was published in the journal The Science of Nature.

Read the UK Daily Mail story.

Featured image at top: An international team of researchers examined the color vision of the brightly colored jumping spider Saitis barbipes. Photo/Bernard Dupont/Wikimedia Commons