Encoding of communication signals by three types of electroreceptor afferents in Eigenmannia virescens
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1
Lund University, Department of Biology, Sweden
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2
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Department Biologie II, Germany
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3
Eberhardt Karls Universität Tübingen, Institut für Neurobiologie, Germany
The weakly electric fish Eigenmannia virescens has been a neuroethological model system for many years. Its jamming avoidance response is one of the best investigated and understood behaviors in the animal kingdom. Also the electrical communication behaviors during courtship, the sensory perception of theses as well as their generation by motor control circuits have been described in some detail.
Electric fish possess an electric organ whose discharges (electric organ discharge or EOD) lead to an electric field that surrounds the animal. Distortions of this field imposed by nearby objects or the fields of con-specifics are sensed by arrays of electroreceptors. The gathered information is used to navigate and forage, as well as for communication purposes. Besides the active system which is tuned to the fish's own field there is also a passive system that senses low-frequency changes of the electric field as induced, for example, by muscle potentials of animals in the vicinity.
We follow these lines and study the communication behavior as well as the encoding of these signals by the various types of electroreceptors. We report previously undescribed modulations of the electric organ discharge of E. virescens which we identified as communication signals. In in vivo electrophysiological experiments we studied the responses of the receptor cells of both the passive system, the ampullary receptors, as well as the active system, so called P- and T-units, to these newly described as well as previously described frequency modulations. We show that all three types of electroreceptors respond to communication signals. Their responses allow segregating the communication signals into two classes.
These results are discussed in relation to previous accounts of E. virescens communication signals and their encoding, as well as in comparison to another species of weakly electric fish, the brown ghost knife fish Apteronotus leptorhynchus.
Keywords:
Electrosensation,
Encoding in sensory periphery,
social communication
Conference:
Tenth International Congress of Neuroethology, College Park. Maryland USA, United States, 5 Aug - 10 Aug, 2012.
Presentation Type:
Poster (but consider for participant symposium and student poster award)
Topic:
Sensory: Electrosensory
Citation:
Stöckl
AL,
Benda
J and
Grewe
J
(2012). Encoding of communication signals by three types of electroreceptor afferents in Eigenmannia virescens.
Conference Abstract:
Tenth International Congress of Neuroethology.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnbeh.2012.27.00303
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Received:
30 Apr 2012;
Published Online:
07 Jul 2012.
*
Correspondence:
Ms. Anna L Stöckl, Lund University, Department of Biology, Lund, 223 62, Sweden, anna.stoeckl@uni-konstanz.de