Latest Phototaxis Stories

Brett Smith for RedOrbit.com Civilization has long been derided for intruding upon the habitats of wild animals, and even man’s smaller neighbors have been affected by the wheels of progress. Another measure of this impact can be seen in how street lighting is having a transformative effect on communities of insects and other invertebrates living near them, according to researchers at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. A report published in Biology Letters showed that...

Researchers unravel how the very first eyes in evolution might have worked and how they guide the swimming of marine plankton towards lightLarvae of marine invertebrates "“ worms, sponges, jellyfish - have the simplest eyes that exist. They consist of no more than two cells: a photoreceptor cell and a pigment cell. These minimal eyes, called eyespots, resemble the 'proto-eyes' suggested by Charles Darwin as the first eyes to appear in animal evolution. They cannot form images but allow the...