The polarization of light provides information that is used by many animals for a number of different visually guided behaviours. Several marine species, such as stomatopod crustaceans and cephalopod molluscs, communicate using visual signals that contain polarized information, content that is often part of a more complex multi-dimensional visual signal. In this work, we investigate the evoluti...

Stomatopods (mantis shrimps) possess one of the most complex visual systems in the animal kingdom. Each eye is capable of monocular distance judgement, colour vision involving eight or more primary channels and polarisation vision. This involves a series of eye movements unique among the crustaceans. Furthermore, each eye usually acts almost entirely independently of the other. Colour, in parti...

Mushroom bodies are the iconic learning and memory centers of insects. No previously described crustacean possesses a mushroom body as defined by strict morphological criteria although crustacean centers called hemiellipsoid bodies, which serve functions in sensory integration, have been viewed as evolutionarily convergent with mushroom bodies. Here, using key identifiers to characterize neural...

The research reviewed in this work could not have been done without the support of the National Science Foundation, currently under Grant Number IBN-0235820, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Australian Research Council (Current Grant F00104897), or the National Undersea Research Centers (a NOAA program). We thank the staffs of the Lizard Island Research Station, the Heron Island...

Although stomatopod crustaceans use their chemical senses in many facets of behavior, little is known about their chemosensory neural pathways, especially in comparison to the better-studied decapod crustaceans. We examined the stomatopod Neogonodactylus oerstedii to determine organizational aspects of peripheral and central neural pathway of antennules, which is a major chemosensory organ. We ...

The rare mantis shrimp genus Areosquilla is recorded from Australia for the first time based on nine specimens of A. indica (Hansen, 1926) collected from the Great Barrier Reef. Morphological variation beyond that observed in previous accounts is reported. The present record and other recent discoveries bring the Australian stomatopod fauna to 152 species and 68 genera.

Objects can differ in brightness and colour. At least that is what our own visual system tells us. It now seems that stomatopod shrimps, and possibly also cephalopod molluscs, can see the direction of the electric vector of light, in much the same way we see colour.