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Daily changes in the electric behavior of weakly electric fish naturally persist in constant darkness and are socially synchronized

Daily rhythms allow anticipation of changes and allocation of energy to better cope with predictable events. Rhythms in behavior result from a complex combination of physiological processes timed by the nervous system and synchronized with external information. We aimed to understand how rhythmic be...

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Autores principales: Migliaro, Adriana, Moreno, Victoria, Marchal, Paul, Silva, Ana
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Company of Biologists Ltd 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6310873/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30341102
http://dx.doi.org/10.1242/bio.036319
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author Migliaro, Adriana
Moreno, Victoria
Marchal, Paul
Silva, Ana
author_facet Migliaro, Adriana
Moreno, Victoria
Marchal, Paul
Silva, Ana
author_sort Migliaro, Adriana
collection PubMed
description Daily rhythms allow anticipation of changes and allocation of energy to better cope with predictable events. Rhythms in behavior result from a complex combination of physiological processes timed by the nervous system and synchronized with external information. We aimed to understand how rhythmic behaviors arise in nature, when weakly electric fish are exposed to cyclic environmental influences and social context. Gymnotus omarorum is a South American nocturnal pulse-type gymnotiform. Its electric behavior encodes information about species, sex and physiological state. The rate of emission of the electric organ discharge (EOD-BR) is modulated by exploratory activity and by physical and social environmental stimuli. We show that the EOD-BR increases during the night in the natural habitat even in individuals maintained in constant dark conditions. Locomotor activity is higher at night, however the nocturnal increase of EOD-BR still occurs in motionless fish, demonstrating an independent origin for the locomotor and electric components of exploratory behavior. When fish are observed in nature, social context exerts a synchronizing role on electric behavior. G. omarorum emerges as an exciting wild model for the study of daily rhythms arising in the complexity of the real world, integrating environmental, physical and social cues in the modulation of rhythmic behavior.
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spelling pubmed-63108732018-12-31 Daily changes in the electric behavior of weakly electric fish naturally persist in constant darkness and are socially synchronized Migliaro, Adriana Moreno, Victoria Marchal, Paul Silva, Ana Biol Open Research Article Daily rhythms allow anticipation of changes and allocation of energy to better cope with predictable events. Rhythms in behavior result from a complex combination of physiological processes timed by the nervous system and synchronized with external information. We aimed to understand how rhythmic behaviors arise in nature, when weakly electric fish are exposed to cyclic environmental influences and social context. Gymnotus omarorum is a South American nocturnal pulse-type gymnotiform. Its electric behavior encodes information about species, sex and physiological state. The rate of emission of the electric organ discharge (EOD-BR) is modulated by exploratory activity and by physical and social environmental stimuli. We show that the EOD-BR increases during the night in the natural habitat even in individuals maintained in constant dark conditions. Locomotor activity is higher at night, however the nocturnal increase of EOD-BR still occurs in motionless fish, demonstrating an independent origin for the locomotor and electric components of exploratory behavior. When fish are observed in nature, social context exerts a synchronizing role on electric behavior. G. omarorum emerges as an exciting wild model for the study of daily rhythms arising in the complexity of the real world, integrating environmental, physical and social cues in the modulation of rhythmic behavior. The Company of Biologists Ltd 2018-10-19 /pmc/articles/PMC6310873/ /pubmed/30341102 http://dx.doi.org/10.1242/bio.036319 Text en © 2018. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed.
spellingShingle Research Article
Migliaro, Adriana
Moreno, Victoria
Marchal, Paul
Silva, Ana
Daily changes in the electric behavior of weakly electric fish naturally persist in constant darkness and are socially synchronized
title Daily changes in the electric behavior of weakly electric fish naturally persist in constant darkness and are socially synchronized
title_full Daily changes in the electric behavior of weakly electric fish naturally persist in constant darkness and are socially synchronized
title_fullStr Daily changes in the electric behavior of weakly electric fish naturally persist in constant darkness and are socially synchronized
title_full_unstemmed Daily changes in the electric behavior of weakly electric fish naturally persist in constant darkness and are socially synchronized
title_short Daily changes in the electric behavior of weakly electric fish naturally persist in constant darkness and are socially synchronized
title_sort daily changes in the electric behavior of weakly electric fish naturally persist in constant darkness and are socially synchronized
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6310873/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30341102
http://dx.doi.org/10.1242/bio.036319
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