macula lutea

An oval area in the retina, usually located temporal to the posterior pole of the eye and slightly below the level of the optic disk. It is characterized by the presence of a yellow pigment diffusely permeating the inner layers, contains the fovea centralis in its center, and provides the best phototopic visual acuity. It is devoid of retinal blood vessels, except in its periphery, and receives nourishment from the choriocapillaris of the choroid. (From Cline et al., Dictionary of Visual Science, 4th ed). Every claim on this page comes from the Leumas anatomy graph and carries its source.

What the macula lutea is

An oval area in the retina, usually located temporal to the posterior pole of the eye and slightly below the level of the optic disk. It is characterized by the presence of a yellow pigment diffusely permeating the inner layers, contains the fovea centralis in its center, and provides the best phototopic visual acuity. It is devoid of retinal blood vessels, except in its periphery, and receives nourishment from the choriocapillaris of the choroid. (From Cline et al., Dictionary of Visual Science, 4th ed). The atlas records it as a organ at the organ scale in the human body.

Where the macula lutea is

It sits in the head, within the nervous and sensory systems. Positioned deliberately as part of this species body plan.

What the macula lutea connects to

The atlas records 4 typed relationships for it, across 3 kinds of connection. part of retina.

Supply and innervation

This dataset asserts no arterial supply, venous drainage or innervation for the macula lutea. Only a minority of structures carry those edges here, so an empty answer means nothing has been recorded — not that there is nothing to record.

Also called

Also recorded as macula, macula flava retinae, macula retinae and maculae. Searching any of those names reaches this page.

Source

Uberon multi-species anatomy ontology (Mungall et al.), CC BY 4.0. Term UBERON:0000053, version 2026-06-19, retrieved 2026-08-24. Licence: CC-BY-4.0.

Questions

Where is the macula lutea?

It sits in the head, within the nervous and sensory systems. Positioned deliberately as part of this species body plan.

What does the macula lutea connect to?

Part of: retina.

Is the macula lutea the same in other species?

Leumas holds the same relationship vocabulary for every species it carries, so where another dataset records this structure you can put the two side by side on /compare.