| Description |
Rapid color changes in fish are dependent upon both the lighting conditions and the emotional sate of the animal.
These melanophores of a scalare are for the most part controlled by adrenergic nerve fibers. If the eyes of the fish are strongly illuminated the pigment granules condense together. In darkness, they become dispersed.The pigment granules move on fixed pathways inside the chromatophore cytoplasm, following radially arranged bundles of microtubules [1].
The pigment granules in the red erythrophores of the squirrel fish can migrate at speeds of up to 20 µm per second. this is the fastest known rate of granule transport in chromatophores. The process is shown at 24 times the real speed [2].
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