R6 [FBbt_00004223]

R6

ID: FBbt_00004223

Outer photoreceptor cell of the adult eye whose rhabdomere is located at the right angle vertex of the shorter of the two parallel sides of the trapezoid of rhabdomeres in each ommatidium. It has a single axon that projects along a single lamina optic cartridge (Fischbach and Dittrich, 1989; Wolff and Ready, 1993).

The name photoreceptor cell R6 is occasionally, mistakenly assumed to refer to any Rh6 expressing photoreceptor cell. This is incorrect. This term only refers to a type of adult eye photoreceptor cell. The name is based simply on the position of the cell and its rhabdomere within each ommatidium - see figure 4 in Wolff and Ready, 1993. Cell connectivity was determined by analysis of semi-automated EM reconstruction of 749 serial sections of 21 complete lamina cartridges. The number of synaptic connections for R6 (presynaptic/postsynaptic) in a single lamina cartridge with each cell type was the following: L1 (45/-), L2 (47/-), L3 (12/-), L4 (-/3), Lai (40/-), Lawf (-/1), epithelial glia (11/-) and marginal glia (2/-)(Rivera-Alba et al., 2011).