Spooky Interaction at a Distance in Cave and Surface Dwelling Electric Fishes

Glass knifefish ( ) are a group of weakly electric fishes found throughout the Amazon basin. Their electric organ discharges (EODs) are energetically costly adaptations used in social communication and for localizing conspecifics and other objects including prey at night and in turbid water. Interes...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Frontiers in integrative neuroscience Vol. 14; p. 561524
Main Authors:	Fortune, Eric S, Andanar, Nicole, Madhav, Manu, Jayakumar, Ravikrishnan P, Cowan, Noah J, Bichuette, Maria Elina, Soares, Daphne
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Switzerland Frontiers Research Foundation 22-10-2020 Frontiers Media S.A
Subjects:	Avoidance behavior Behavior cavefish Caves Creeks & streams Eigenmannia Electric fields Electric instruments Electrodes Electrosensory system envelope epigean Field study Fish gymnotiformes Iodine Jamming avoidance response Lateral line Neuroscience Territorial behavior Tomography troglobitic weakly electric fish Brazil United States > US diceCT envelope gymnotiformes epigean troglobitic jamming avoidance response cavefish weakly electric fish
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Summary:	Glass knifefish ( ) are a group of weakly electric fishes found throughout the Amazon basin. Their electric organ discharges (EODs) are energetically costly adaptations used in social communication and for localizing conspecifics and other objects including prey at night and in turbid water. Interestingly, a troglobitic population of blind cavefish survives in complete darkness in a cave system in central Brazil. We examined the effects of troglobitic conditions, which includes a complete loss of visual cues and potentially reduced food sources, by comparing the behavior and movement of freely behaving cavefish to a nearby epigean (surface) population ( ). We found that the strengths of electric discharges in cavefish were greater than in surface fish, which may result from increased reliance on electrosensory perception, larger size, and sufficient food resources. Surface fish were recorded while feeding at night and did not show evidence of territoriality, whereas cavefish appeared to maintain territories. Surprisingly, we routinely found both surface and cavefish with sustained differences in EOD frequencies that were below 10 Hz despite being within close proximity of about 50 cm. A half century of analysis of electrosocial interactions in laboratory tanks suggest that these small differences in EOD frequencies should have triggered the "jamming avoidance response," a behavior in which fish change their EOD frequencies to increase the difference between individuals. Pairs of fish also showed significant interactions between EOD frequencies and relative movements at large distances, over 1.5 m, and at high differences in frequencies, often >50 Hz. These interactions are likely "envelope" responses in which fish alter their EOD frequency in relation to higher order features, specifically changes in the depth of modulation, of electrosocial signals.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 Edited by: Michael R. Markham, University of Oklahoma, United States Reviewed by: Thomas Preuss, Hunter College (CUNY), United States; Elias Manjarrez, Meritorious Autonomous University of Puebla, Mexico
ISSN:	1662-5145 1662-5145
DOI:	10.3389/fnint.2020.561524