Circuit Mechanisms Underlying Chromatic Encoding in Drosophila Photoreceptors (Current Biology)

Heath and Christenson et al. show that color opponency in fly photoreceptors is the result of an evolutionary convergent horizontal-cell-mediated pathway and an insect-specific pathway. These allow the visual system to build an efficient yet comprehensive representation of chromatic information and are predicted to give rise to a complex spatial receptive field.