Skip to main content

PERSPECTIVE article

Front. Ecol. Evol.
Sec. Evolutionary Developmental Biology
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fevo.2024.1428976
This article is part of the Research Topic Tunicates in Evolutionary Developmental Biology View all 10 articles

Special Issue: Tunicates in Evolutionary Developmental Biology: Perspective Staring into Crystal Balls: Understanding Evolution and Development of in vivo Aquatic Organismal Transparency

Provisionally accepted
Kohji HOTTA Kohji HOTTA 1*Shunsuke O. Miyasaka Shunsuke O. Miyasaka 1Kotaro Oka Kotaro Oka 2Takumi T. Shito Takumi T. Shito 1
  • 1 Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan
  • 2 Other, Yokohama, Japan

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Organismal transparency is an ecologically important trait that can provide camouflage advantages to diverse organisms. Transparent organisms are quite common—especially in oceans. Organismal transparency requires low absorption and scattering of light in the body across multi-scale levels. However, it is still not fully understood how such organisms achieve these requirements. Understanding this process requires multiple approaches from various fields and methods. Here, we offer recent insights on this topic from the viewpoints of evolution, developmental biology, and evaluation methodologies of organismal transparency. We also propose “organismal transparency biology” as a new interdisciplinary field of study. Furthermore, we suggest that tunicates are an ideal model animal for studying in vivo organismal transparency.

    Keywords: bio-transparency, eco-evo-devo, Hyper-spectral imaging, Tunicate, Ascidiidae

    Received: 07 May 2024; Accepted: 22 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 HOTTA, Miyasaka, Oka and Shito. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Kohji HOTTA, Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University, Yokohama, 223-8522, Kanagawa, Japan

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.