The Role of the Mauthner Cell in Fast-Starts Involving Escape in Teleost Fishes

Eaton, Robert C.; Hackett, John T.

doi:10.1007/978-1-4899-2286-1_8

Cited by 153 publications

(125 citation statements)

References 84 publications

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“…Although tentacled snakes can make an explosive strike with remarkable speed (14,49), fish are expert escape artists with a wellstudied neural circuitry that mediates high-speed evasion of predators (50)(51)(52)(53). The fish C-start escape response has an onset latency of only about 7 ms from the detection of a water disturbance and begins with a C-shaped bend of the body followed by propulsion away from the predator.…”

Section: Turning the Tables On Fishmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of brains and behavior for optimal foraging: A tale of two predators

Catania

2012

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Star-nosed moles and tentacled snakes have exceptional mechanosensory systems that illustrate a number of general features of nervous system organization and evolution. Star-nosed moles use the star for active touch-rapidly scanning the environment with the nasal rays. The star has the densest concentration of mechanoreceptors described for any mammal, with a central tactile fovea magnified in anatomically visible neocortical modules. The somatosensory system parallels visual system organization, illustrating general features of high-resolution sensory representations. Starnosed moles are the fastest mammalian foragers, able to identify and eat small prey in 120 ms. Optimal foraging theory suggests that the star evolved for profitably exploiting small invertebrates in a competitive wetland environment. The tentacled snake's facial appendages are superficially similar to the mole's nasal rays, but they have a very different function. These snakes are fully aquatic and use tentacles for passive detection of nearby fish. Trigeminal afferents respond to water movements and project tentacle information to the tectum in alignment with vision, illustrating a general theme for the integration of different sensory modalities. Tentacled snakes act as rare enemies, taking advantage of fish C-start escape responses by startling fish toward their strike-often aiming for the future location of escaping fish. By turning fish escapes to their advantage, snakes increase strike success and reduce handling time with head-first captures. The latter may, in turn, prevent snakes from becoming prey when feeding. Findings in these two unusual predators emphasize the importance of a multidisciplinary approach for understanding the evolution of brains and behavior.neocortex | neuroethology S tar-nosed moles and tentacled snakes each have novel sensory appendages protruding from their faces. These appendages give both animals a unique appearance unparalleled among their peers-no other mammal or snake has comparable appendages ( Fig. 1). However, there is more than the bizarre appearance of these animals to attract our attention. Extreme sensory specializations often reveal general principles of nervous system function and organization that are less obvious in other species (1-7). More generally, extremes in morphology provide informative case studies in evolutionary biology. Indeed, Darwin (8) devoted a special section of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection to "Organs of extreme perfection and complication." One can argue whether these unusual species seem in some way perfected, but surprisingly, the complexity of the mole's star has been cited as evidence of a divine creator (9).My goal is to review recent studies of these two species beginning with star-nosed moles, the species for which we have the most information from many years of study. The mole's nose is exceptional not only in appearance but also in the high density of mechanoreceptors that covers the nasal rays and the complexity of the modular neocortical net...

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Section: Turning the Tables On Fishmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of brains and behavior for optimal foraging: A tale of two predators

Catania

2012

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…The startle response used by larvae in their evasive behavior probably involves the Mauthner neuron (Eaton & Hackett 1984). This neuron has connections to the inner ear in fishes and other connections are suspected .…”

Section: Stimulus For An Evasive Responsementioning

confidence: 99%

Vulnerability of Atlantic herring larvae to predation by yearling herring

Fuiman¹

1989

Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser.

113

107

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T h s study quantifies age-related changes in the vulnerabhty of Atlantic herring Clupea harengus larvae to predation by larger herring through experimental investigations of capture probability in the laboratory and gross vulnerabhty in large enclosures (mesocosms) Seventy-six laboratory predation trials were staged involving larvae averaging 8.6 to 32.0 mm in length (4 to 118 d posthatching). In all, 1067 attacks were observed. The proportion of larvae responding to an attack was constant (6.2 %) for lengths < 26 mm. Responsiveness of larger larvae increased rapidly with length. This was probably due to the functional development of auditory bullae. The proportion of responding larvae that successfully escaped an attack (response effectiveness) increased throughout the larval period, as did predator errors. Increases in responsiveness, response effectiveness, and predator error rate contributed to a decline in capture probability as larvae grew. Nevertheless, in mesocosrns the number of larvae consumed in 8 h by 1 predator increased with larva length, suggesting that encounter rate and possibly attack rate increased with larva length, probably due to increased conspicuousness of larvae.

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“…The most extreme response to a threatening stimulus is the escape response which, in fish, corresponds to a high energy burst of swimming associated with a short latency and high acceleration and speed (Domenici and Blake, 1997;Eaton and Hackett, 1984). Escape responses in fish are therefore important in avoiding predation (Walker et al, 2005) and their kinematics, performance and physiology have been well studied (Domenici and Blake, 1997;Wakeling, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preparing for escape: anti-predator posture and fast-start performance in gobies

Turesson

Satta

Domenici

2009

Journal of Experimental Biology

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SUMMARYThe adoption of postures as a response to threats is often interpreted in terms of predator detection or signalling (e.g. vigilance and defence display). The possibility that an alternative or additional function of anti-predator postures might be to enhance the subsequent escape has been largely unexplored. Here, we use black goby (Gobius niger) to test the hypothesis that a postural curvature caused by a bending response (i.e. a slow muscle contraction which bends the body with no forward displacement) induced by a weak stimulus (WS) may affect escape responses. Three experiments were carried out. (1) Control and WSstimulated fish were startled using lateral mechanical stimuli, to test whether the orientation of the postural C-bend affected escape direction and performance. Postural curvature was defined as positive when escapes were towards the convex side of the postural C-shape, and negative when they were towards the concave side. Locomotor performance increased with postural curvature, although fish showed a preference for escaping away from the stimulus regardless of postural curvature. (2) Control and WS-stimulated fish were startled from above, hence minimising the directionality of the threat on the horizontal plane. WSstimulated fish showed a bias towards escaping from a positive curvature, thereby enhancing their locomotor performance. (3) Field observations with stimuli coming from above showed that gobies escape most often towards the convex side of the postural C-shape. By escaping from positively curved postures, most of the initial tailsweep is directed backwards and may provide more thrust than when starting from straight or negatively curved postures. Hence, the anti-predator posture adopted by alerted benthic fishes may 'prepare' them for their subsequent escape response because it conveys an advantage when they are attacked from above (a likely occurrence), although when gobies are stimulated horizontally, escape direction may be favoured over high locomotor performance when the two trade off.

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The Role of the Mauthner Cell in Fast-Starts Involving Escape in Teleost Fishes

Cited by 153 publications

References 84 publications

Evolution of brains and behavior for optimal foraging: A tale of two predators

Evolution of brains and behavior for optimal foraging: A tale of two predators

Vulnerability of Atlantic herring larvae to predation by yearling herring

Preparing for escape: anti-predator posture and fast-start performance in gobies

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