We are most delighted that Dr Simen Bruoygard has just passed his viva!

For his PhD, Simen looked at the receptove field organisation of retinal bipolar cells of zebrafish. Check out the recent conference poster below, and stay tuned for the paper!

Thank you also to Ryan MacDonald and Varun Sreenivasan for serving as examiners!

Kafetzis G^§, Bok M^§, Baden T^§*, Nilsson DE^§*. A median eye origin of the vertebrate retina explains its unique circuitory. bioRxiv. doi 10.1101/2025.09.11.675609 . direct link. pdf.

We are most delighted that Dr George Kafetzis has just passed his viva!

For his PhD, George looked at the visual system of sharks to learn about the evolution of vertebrate vision. One preprint on the origin of the vertebrate eye is already out, and  watch this space for some exciting shark papers !

Thank you also to Gaspar Jekely and Paul Graham for serving as examiners!

Kafetzis G^§, Bok M^§, Baden T^§*, Nilsson DE^§*. A median eye origin of the vertebrate retina explains its unique circuitory. bioRxiv. doi 10.1101/2025.09.11.675609 . direct link. pdf.

Fornetto C^§, Euler T, Baden T^§. Zebrafish use spectral information to suppress the visual background. Cell 188 1-17. direct link. pdf.

In brief

Vertebrate eyes first evolved in water, where spectral content rapidly fades with distance. Zebrafish exploit this loss by antagonizing cone signals to suppress the background, pointing to distance estimation—rather than color—as an ancestral cone function.

Highlights

• Zebrafish use fading spectral content in water to suppress visual background
• They do this by contrasting, not summing, inputs from distinct ancestral cone types
• Vertebrate cone diversity may reflect ancestrally aquatic ‘‘non-color’’ functions
• Mammalian cone loss may reflect rapid terrestrialization, not nocturnal ancestry

For a teaser, check our Michi’s latest poster on the project

Congratulations to Michi Forshofer for the audience-selected poster award for his work on frog vision across metamorphosis!

Some conference impressions of of our posters and talks below.

As always, the posters are archived free to view and download here.

The slides for Tom’s talk are here. ERM2025 – Eye Evolution