Professor Dr Dan-Eric Nilsson

Main areas of research: Evolutionary biology, ophthalmoscopic techniques, evolutionary algorithms, visual optics, evolution of the eye
Dan-Erik Nilsson is a Swedish zoologist whose research is focussed on evolutionary biology, the development of ophthalmoscopic techniques for small-scale animal eyes, the derivation of evolutionary algorithms and visual optics, as well as the evolution of the eye. His insights into the functioning and emergence of different types of eyes in the animal kingdom have contributed greatly to the further technological development of optical systems.
His primary interest concerns the question of why the eyes of animals are so clearly superior to camera technologies in terms of visual function and efficiency despite taking up less space and using less material and energy and despite the fact that the eyes of animals must also make compromises between visual acuity, perception of colour and contrast sensitivity as dictated by ecological demands.
Through his research, Nilsson was able to settle a long-standing scientific controversy about the emergence of eyes in vertebrates. Well into the 1990s, the complexity of lens-containing eyes provided a basis for critics to deny the theory of evolution. Nilsson, who in collaboration with a colleague published a model for the gradual evolution of lens-containing eyes from flat eyepatches, was the first since Darwin’s hypothesis to show a way that the eye as we know it could indeed have emerged in evolutionary time. His model for the evolution of lens-containing eyes in fish determined 1,829 necessary individual steps that could take place in 364,000 generations or, alternatively, years. This rate of change corresponds to steps so small that it was easy to imagine them occurring through genetic changes.
Nilsson was able to gain important insights by examining the eyes of nocturnal insects like moths and crepuscular saltwater crabs. In 1988 he discovered a till then unknown third type of eye on the velvet crab of the genus Macropipus that lives in the North Sea: a so-called superposition eye consisting of a single lens and a parabolic mirror. In the case of superposition eyes, which are typical for nocturnal insects, the individual eye “units” of the compound eye are not shielded from one another for their whole length so that overlapping of the individual images occurs. As a result, the animals are able to distinguish things even with low light intensity, at the expense, however, of keenness of sight.
Working together with the automobile manufacturer Toyota, Nilsson developed a patent for an automotive night vision device that automatically activates the brakes when an animal or pedestrian suddenly enters the roadway in the dark. Nilsson’s work is also deemed to be an important source of innovation in the field of robotics and the development of computer screens.