Seeing In Colour

[Lborobrewer]

There was a report on the BBC website, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-31775458, that there appear to be tubes that direct red and green light to the red and green cones on the retina, with blue light being scattered more and reach the rod cells as well as the blue cones.
My question is, if our sun was not a yellow star, but was blue, for example, what affect on the vision of any life form that inhabited this hypothetical earth would there be?
Also, certain life forms, for example insects have a higher sensitivity to the blue end of the spectrum than humans do, is this because their eyes evolved when the Sun was younger and hence had a higher output in the blue/UV end of the spectrum?

[Zacs-Master]

If the sun was anything else than what it is, life as we know it, wouldn't exist.
Insects have evolved to see in different regions of the spectrum so that they can find food more easily. That's a very simplistic explanation and there are many other factors.

You might find this interesting:
http://archive.larouchepac.com/node/17203

[Old_Geezer]

I doubt it would make a lot of difference. Evolution stumbles upon something that works (provides benefit) and it gets retained. Blue sun or yellow sun.

Different species stumbled into different mutations, where they worked for them, it was retained.

But I don't claim to be an expert.

[Peter Pedant]

Second part of the question is easier
the colour of the sun has not matched the development in time of the insect ( compound )

Darwin said - once the development of the mammalian eye is solved it will prove Evolution. The mammalian eye just appears " Bop!" without any intermediate forms ( enter creationists thro this loophole )

A few years ago a protein associated with the mammal retina was found in ... insects. That really did shock people

The first part of the question is on the lines - if we had a blue son, what would the retina look like and I have to say: I dont know

Biology is not very like engineering where the mad engineer says - lets build a prototype and see if it works ! You cant really do that in Biology

[beso]

The output of a star increases over its lifetime.

In fact even if we deal with the human factors currently causing the Earth's temperature to increase, life is as we know it will be gone in the next billion years because the Sun's output will have increased so much that all the water will have evaporated into space.