Digest: Life underground and sensory adaptations in caecilians (Gymnophiona)

Do caecilians retain some degree of vision? Navarrete Méndez et al. (2025) used an integrative approach to show that the long-wavelength-sensitive (LWS) opsin gene is present and that retinal morphology remains intact across all eight caecilian families investigated. This finding suggests that caecilians maintain some visual capacity, likely enabling day-night or color discrimination. More broadly, this study highlights key aspects of sensory adaptation in subterranean tetrapods.