The receptive fields of Daphnia ommatidia

Abstract

1. The focal length and positions of the principal planes of an isolated Daphnia lens were determined, and the refractive index of the rhabdom was measured. 2. The lens can form an image, but this always lies well behind the rhabdom. This was confirmed by direct observation of images inside a clear-eye mutant Daphnia eye. 3. The rhabdom was shown to be unlikely to function as a waveguide, and a ray optics model is proposed to enable the prediction of ommatidial receptive fields from the lens data. 4. The predicted receptive fields have wide plateaus and steep sides, and there are virtually no totally blind gaps between neighbouring ommatidia.