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The irises of human eyes exhibit a wide spectrum of colours. Eye color is a polygenic phenotypic trait determined by two factors: the pigmentation of the eye's iris [1] [2] and the frequency-dependence of the scattering of light by the turbid medium in the stroma of the iris.
An organism's "eye color" is actually the color of one's iris, the cornea being transparent and the white sclera entirely outside the area of interest. Melanin is yellowish to dark hazel in the stromal pigment cells, and black in the iris pigment epithelium, which lies in a thin but very opaque layer across the back of the iris.
[10] [11] The blue iris is an example of a structural color because it relies only on the interference of light through the turbid medium to generate the color. Blue eyes and brown eyes, therefore, are anatomically different from each other in a genetically non-variable way because of the difference between turbid media and melanin.
Light enters the eye through the pupil, and the iris regulates the amount of light by controlling the size of the pupil. This is known as the pupillary light reflex. The iris contains two groups of smooth muscles; a circular group called the sphincter pupillae, and a radial group called the dilator pupillae. When the sphincter pupillae contract ...
Eye color, specifically the color of the irises, is determined primarily by the concentration and distribution of melanin. Although the processes determining eye color are not fully understood, it is known that inherited eye color is determined by multiple genes. Environmental or acquired factors can alter these inherited traits. [7]
Hazel eye. Hazel eyes are due to a combination of Rayleigh scattering and a moderate amount of melanin in the iris' anterior border layer. [42] Hazel eyes often appear to shift in color from a brown to a green. Although hazel mostly consists of brown and green, the dominant color in the eye can either be brown/gold or green.
Light entering the eye is refracted as it passes through the cornea. It then passes through the pupil (controlled by the iris) and is further refracted by the lens. The cornea and lens act together as a compound lens to project an inverted image onto the retina. S. Ramón y Cajal, Structure of the Mammalian Retina, 1900
Apposition eyes work by gathering a number of images, one from each eye, and combining them in the brain, with each eye typically contributing a single point of information. The typical apposition eye has a lens focusing light from one direction on the rhabdom, while light from other directions is absorbed by the dark wall of the ommatidium.