Light Detectors, Photoreceptors, and Imaging Systems in Nature [Hardcover]

The influence of light on the lives of living organisms is all-pervasive, affecting movement, vision, behavior, and physiological activity. This book is a biophysically grounded comparative survey of how animals detect light and perceive their surroundings. Included are discussions of photoreceptors, light emitters, and eyes. The book focuses in particular on the kinds of optical systems that have evolved, beginning with unicellular organisms that detect and respond to light through to more advanced and complex designs for imaging. The relevance of these studies extends beyond biology, since these findings can be used to help develop photoreceptor energy conversion and information systems, and optical imaging devices with a wide range of everyday applications. The book will appeal to biophysicists, photobiologists, bioengineers, neuroscientists, and all researchers working in the area of vision and visual optics.

1. Light and Life: An Introduction
2. The Physical Nature of Light: the Interaction of Light with Matter and Molecules of Life
3. Biochromes: Pigments and Photoreceptions
4. The Cell Membrane: Molecular Structure
5. Specialized Cellular Membranes for Photoreception: The Chloroplast in Photosynthesis
6. Searching for Light: Photostatic Behavior
7. Emergence of an Imaging Eye
8. Visual Pigments
9. The Vertebrate Eye and Visual Excitation
10. Birds and Fishes
11. Spectral Sensitivity of the Eye and Color Vision
12. Invertebrate Eyes
13. Polarized Light in Nature
14. Light that Controls Behavior: Detection by Animals
15. Bioengineering: Biomimetics

The book is of value . . . as a source of inspiration for biologists who are intrigued by the subject, as well as for engineers who are looking to biological structures for new ideas. --The Quarterly Review of Biology

Wolken has synthesized information from physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering to provide an interdisciplinary survl32