A new tracking device capable of wireless data transmission is allowing MBL scientists to explore how sounds are processed in the brain of free-swimming fish. The device, a type of telemetry tag, was developed by Whitman Center researcher Allen Mensinger, and is being used by fellow researcher Elizabeth Whitchurch to study the plainfin midshipman, a nocturnal toadfish that lives off of the Pacific coast of North America.
Sound plays a crucial role in reproduction for the plainfin midshipman. At night, during the breeding season, males attract potential mates by emitting a low-frequency hum. Because it is dark, this hum must act as a map, guiding interested females to the males’ nests where they then lay their eggs. The process that scientists are hoping to better understand is how exactly the female midshipman brain turns these sounds into directions that lead the fish to the male’s location.
Due to limitations of the tools used to monitor fish neurons, previous research has focused only on immobilized fish, reacting to recorded calls piped in via speaker to a tank roughly the size of a five-gallon bucket. But using this new, telemetry tag along with other novel methods, Whitchurch hopes to be able to measure how the midshipman brain encodes sound as multiple fish swim freely, responding to each other’s live calls, in a tank about the size of a kids’ plastic swimming pool.
Whitchurch is using this new telemetry tag to remotely monitor how sound is processed in the brain of free-swimming plainfin midshipman fish.
Credit: Allen Mensinger
“The stimulus,” says Whitchurch, referring to the midshipman’s call, “is going to be conceivably changing for the fish as it turns its body from one direction to the next. So we want to know: What is it about the physical stimulus that’s being encoded in the brain as the fish moves through the water?” Understanding this process, she explains, could potentially inform the design of future mobile electronic devices that would use sound to navigate underwater.
Whitchurch, a 2011 Grass Fellow at the MBL, is a postdoctoral scientist at the University of Washington. Mensinger is a professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
Contacts and sources:
Diana Kenney
Marine Biological Laboratory
Female midshipman fish use their sense of hearing to guide them to potential mates.
Credit: Amanda R. Martinez
Sound plays a crucial role in reproduction for the plainfin midshipman. At night, during the breeding season, males attract potential mates by emitting a low-frequency hum. Because it is dark, this hum must act as a map, guiding interested females to the males’ nests where they then lay their eggs. The process that scientists are hoping to better understand is how exactly the female midshipman brain turns these sounds into directions that lead the fish to the male’s location.
Whitchurch points out a male midshipman fish in its fictitious nest in a monitoring tank.
Credit: Amanda R. Martinez
Due to limitations of the tools used to monitor fish neurons, previous research has focused only on immobilized fish, reacting to recorded calls piped in via speaker to a tank roughly the size of a five-gallon bucket. But using this new, telemetry tag along with other novel methods, Whitchurch hopes to be able to measure how the midshipman brain encodes sound as multiple fish swim freely, responding to each other’s live calls, in a tank about the size of a kids’ plastic swimming pool.
Whitchurch is using this new telemetry tag to remotely monitor how sound is processed in the brain of free-swimming plainfin midshipman fish.
“The stimulus,” says Whitchurch, referring to the midshipman’s call, “is going to be conceivably changing for the fish as it turns its body from one direction to the next. So we want to know: What is it about the physical stimulus that’s being encoded in the brain as the fish moves through the water?” Understanding this process, she explains, could potentially inform the design of future mobile electronic devices that would use sound to navigate underwater.
Whitchurch, a 2011 Grass Fellow at the MBL, is a postdoctoral scientist at the University of Washington. Mensinger is a professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
Diana Kenney
Marine Biological Laboratory
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