Neural mechanisms of cephalopod camouflage

Xitong Liang, PhD
Assistant Professor, School of Life Sciences
Peking University
Beijing, China

Abstract:

Cephalopods (e.g., octopus, squid, and cuttlefish) have the remarkable ability to change their skin color and pattern within seconds for camouflage or communication purposes, by controlling the size of millions of skin pigment cells called chromatophores. Our study tracked over 100,000 chromatophores in behaving cuttlefish and revealed an exploratory and iterative approach to optimize their camouflage skin pattern through visual estimation of the difference between their body and the background. Furthermore, we compared cuttlefish with another cephalopod species lacking complex skin patterns and identified evolutionary divergence in the neural circuit for skin pattern control between the two.