Structural and functional diversity directly contribute to an animal's sensory abilities. Receptor, processor and effector units allow an animal to utilize sensory information as an environmental resource. Comparative study of sensory systems is important because it may help explain the relative evolutionary success of certain species. This interdisciplinary conference takes this integrative perspective to examine vision in elasmobranch branch fishes, which include the sharks and rays. Elasmobranchs represent a relatively small but evolutionarily very important group of vertebrates. While some species of these animals have relatively primitive organization of certain systems, other species have remarkably specialized adaptations; vision is one sense showing such diversity. A variety of recent studies have explored visual biochemistry, anatomy, physiology, and behavior in these animals. This conference will coalesce this recent information around the functioning of the visual system of elasmobranchs, its relation to ecological factors, and its importance to understanding vision in the vertebrates. This conference is novel for neuroscience because instead of using different animals to look at functions from a subcellular or cellular perspective, it uses one animal group to look at sensory function from perspectives ranging from the subcellular to the ecological. The work will have impact on work on visual science, on other sensory systems, on ecology and on marine biology.
