From mudflats to deep-sea habitats: vision in semi-terrestrial fiddler crabs and mesopelagic hyperiid amphipods

Many animals rely on vision to guide their behaviour, but maintaining a visual system has a high energy cost. Animals have consequently evolved diverse visual systems adapted to perceive information that is most salient to their life history and habitat. Crustaceans are a group that exemplify a diversity of visual systems. In this thesis, I explore crustaceans that inhabit vastly different habitats: fiddler crabs from bright mudflats and hyperiid amphipods from the dark mesopelagic. I show that both have evolved vision that is adapted to their environments, allowing them to perform visual tasks that are crucial for their survival.