Evolution of neural mechanisms underlying the behavioral diversification of weakly electric fishes

Abstract

Understanding neural mechanisms underlying behavioral diversity is a fundamental challenge in neuroscience and evolutionary biology. Weakly electric fish provide an excellent system for studying this, as they exhibit convergent evolution between distantly related clades and fine-scale neural adaptations linked to behavioral divergence within clades. These fish actively generate electric fields to communicate and sense their environment. Electric organs that generate these fields and electroreceptors that detect them have evolved multiple times independently. Despite their independent origins, these clades share numerous similarities in their electrosensory and electromotor systems across several levels of biological organization. On the other hand, studies in one particular clade have related evolutionary divergence in sensory perception and behavior to changes in electroreceptor physiology and central processing in sensory and sensorimotor pathways. Together, these findings reveal both predictability in the evolution of neural mechanisms for behavior and ways in which neural adaptations can drive behavioral diversification.