Karen Carleton

About

Karen Carleton is a Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on the evolution of visual systems and visual communication, including the genetics of visual system tuning and physical modeling of color signals and visual discrimination. She uses African cichlid fishes as a model to explore how natural and sexual selection drive communication. Her work also involves studying the evolution of rod and cone phototransduction by tuning photoreceptor responsivity through the evolution of protein structure and gene expression, employing a comparative genomic approach across a diversity of vertebrates including mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and agnathans.

Research topics

• Biology
• Evolutionary biology
• Genetics
• Zoology
• Materials science

Selected publications

• Vision using multiple distinct rod opsins in deep-sea fishes

  Science · 2019-05-09 · 255 citations

  articleOpen access

  Fish catch color with rods Vertebrates are typically thought to have a consistent system for processing light, in which multiple cone opsins permit color vision during the day, but a single rod opsin provides only monochrome vision in the dark. Musilova et al. analyzed more than 100 deep-sea fish genomes and found a previously unknown proliferation of rod opsin genes that generate rod opsin photopigments that are tuned to different wavelengths of light. These receptors may allow the fish to perc…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Seeing the rainbow: mechanisms underlying spectral sensitivity in teleost fishes

  Journal of Experimental Biology · 2020-04-15 · 132 citations

  reviewOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Among vertebrates, teleost eye diversity exceeds that found in all other groups. Their spectral sensitivities range from ultraviolet to red, and the number of visual pigments varies from 1 to over 40. This variation is correlated with the different ecologies and life histories of fish species, including their variable aquatic habitats: murky lakes, clear oceans, deep seas and turbulent rivers. These ecotopes often change with the season, but fish may also migrate between ecotopes diurnally, seas…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A detailed investigation of the visual system and visual ecology of the Barrier Reef anemonefish, Amphiprion akindynos

  Scientific Reports · 2019-11-11 · 48 citations

  articleOpen access

  Vision plays a major role in the life of most teleosts, and is assumingly well adapted to each species ecology and behaviour. Using a multidisciplinary approach, we scrutinised several aspects of the visual system and ecology of the Great Barrier Reef anemonefish, Amphiprion akindynos, including its orange with white patterning, retinal anatomy and molecular biology, its symbiosis with anemones and sequential hermaphroditism. Amphiprion akindynos possesses spectrally distinct visual pigments and…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Axes of visual adaptation in the ecologically diverse family Cichlidae

  Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology · 2020-05-19 · 40 citations

  reviewOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Diurnal variation in opsin expression and common housekeeping genes necessitates comprehensive normalization methods for quantitative real‐time PCR analyses

  Molecular Ecology Resources · 2019-07-20 · 40 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  To determine the visual sensitivities of an organism of interest, quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) is often used to quantify expression of the light-sensitive opsins in the retina. While qRT-PCR is an affordable, high-throughput method for measuring expression, it comes with inherent normalization issues that affect the interpretation of results, especially as opsin expression can vary greatly based on developmental stage, light environment or diurnal cycles…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• What Do Lake Malawi Cichlid Fishes See?

  NSF · $33k · 2006–2008

• What Do Lake Malawi Cichlid Fishes See?

  NSF · $287k · 2002–2006

• Evolutionary mechanisms controlling opsin gene expression variation

  NIH · $1.9M · 2014–2022

Frequent coauthors

• Stephen R. Leone

  Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  36 shared

• Bernard Bourguignon

  Université Paris-Saclay

  27 shared

• Sara M. Stieb

  Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology

  25 shared

• N. Justin Marshall

  University of Queensland

  25 shared

• Thomas D. Kocher

  University of Maryland, College Park

  23 shared

• Matthew A. Conte

  Walter Reed Army Institute of Research

  19 shared

• Fabio Cortesi

  19 shared

• Sri Pratima Nandamuri

  University of Maryland, College Park

  19 shared

Similar researchers at University of Maryland, College Park

• Joshua Weitzh-65
• Jonathan Simonh-51