How do some fish see color in the black-and-white world of the ocean’s depths? In episode 55, Zuzana Musilová, an evolutionary biologist at Charles University in Prague, discusses her research into the unique way that some fish in the deep ocean’s darkness may be able to see in color. Her article “Vision using multiple distinct rod opsins in deep-sea fishes” that was published with multiple coauthors on May 10, 2019 in Science. An open-access preprint is available on bioRxiv.

Fishing for Color - Zuzana Musilová Fishing for Color - Zuzana Musilová Fishing for Color - Zuzana Musilová Fishing for Color - Zuzana Musilová Fishing for Color - Zuzana Musilová Fishing for Color - Zuzana Musilová {{svg_share_icon}} {{svg_share_icon}}



Subscribe: iTunes | Google Podcasts | Google Play | Spotify | RSS

Websites and other resources

Zuzana’s website and lab Article’s supplemental materials Charles University press release on Zuzana’s study A spiny silverfin (Diretmus argenteus) specimen, fixed (by Zuzana Musilova)



Videos simulations of single rod photopigments in action



Zuzana describes the videos’ contents

Press and Media

New York Times | Popular Mechanics | Discover Magazine | CNET

Bonus Clips

Patrons of Parsing Science gain exclusive access to bonus clips from all our episodes and can also download mp3s of every individual episode.

Support us for as little as $1 per month at Patreon. Cancel anytime.



Clips available to patrons include …

Full episode with available download

How the specimen were collected and by whom

How Zuzana came to Walter Salzburger’s lab & to search opsin genes

The role of different rods

Controls outside of teleosts

Time spent prior to publication

Other lineages with multiple rhodopsins

The videos in the supplemental materials

Development of the five scenarios

Reducing findings to just five printed pages

Are fish frightened by documentarists’ submarines?

What’s Zuzana’s experience with submarine research?

Does Zuzana often scuba dive for her research?

