Certain species of the crawling lumps of mollusk called chitons polka-dot their armor-plated backs with hundreds of tiny black eyes. But mixing protection and vision can come at a price.
The lenses are rocky nuggets formed mostly of aragonite, the same mineral that pearls and abalone shells are made of. New analyses of these eyes support previous evidence that they form rough images instead of just sensing overall lightness or darkness, says materials scientist Ling Li of Harvard University.
Adding eyes to armor does introduce weak spots in the shell. Yet the positioning of the eyes and their growth habits show how chitons compensate for that, Li and his colleagues report in the November 20 Science.
Li and coauthor Christine Ortiz of MIT have been studying such trade-offs in biological materials that serve multiple functions. Human designers often need substances that multitask, and the researchers have turned to evolution’s solutions in chitons and other organisms for inspiration.
