The Mauthner cell in a fish with top-performance and yet flexibly tuned C-starts. I. Identification and comparative morphology
| Autor: | Stefan Schuster, Wolfram Schulze, Kathrin Leupolz, Peter Machnik, Sabine Feyl |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2018 |
| Předmět: |
030110 physiology
0301 basic medicine Male Morphology (linguistics) Physiology Action Potentials Escape response Dendrite Aquatic Science Biology 03 medical and health sciences 0302 clinical medicine Archerfish Mauthner cell Escape Reaction Biological neural network medicine Animals Molecular Biology Ecology Evolution Behavior and Systematics Neurons Neuroethology biology.organism_classification Spinal cord Perciformes medicine.anatomical_structure Insect Science Animal Science and Zoology Female Neuroscience 030217 neurology & neurosurgery |
| Zdroj: | The Journal of experimental biology. 221(Pt 13) |
| ISSN: | 1477-9145 |
| Popis: | Archerfish use two powerful C-starts: One to escape threats, the other to secure prey that they have downed with a shot of water. The two C-starts are kinematically equivalent, are variable in both phases, and the predictive C-starts – used in hunting – are adjusted in the angle of turning and in the final linear speed to where and when their prey will hit the water surface. Presently nothing is known about the circuits that drive the archerfish C-starts. As the starting point for a neuroethological analysis, we first explored the presence and morphology of any paired Mauthner cell, a key cell in the teleost fast-start system. We show that archerfish have a typical Mauthner cell in each medullary hemisphere and that these send by far the largest axons down the spinal cord. Stimulation of the spinal cord caused short-latency all-or-none field potentials that could be detected even at the surface of the medulla and that had the archerfish Mauthner cell as its only source. The archerfish's Mauthner cell is remarkably similar morphologically to that of equally sized goldfish, except that the archerfish's ventral dendrite is slightly longer and its lateral dendrite thinner. Our data provide the necessary starting point for the dissection of the archerfish fast-start system and of any role potentially played by its Mauthner cell in the two C-start manoeuvres. Moreover, they do not support the recently expressed view that Mauthner cells should be reduced in animals with highly variable fast-start manoeuvres. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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