Meeting Abstract

97.1  Monday, Jan. 6 13:30  Artificial vs. natural stimuli: How conditioned responses to artificial water flows reveal the sensory basis for prey detection in a cichlid fish SCHWALBE, MAB*; WEBB, JF; University of Rhode Island; University of Rhode Island mbergstrom@my.uri.edu

Using natural stimuli to investigate behaviors mediated by the lateral line system (LL) is ideal, but artificial water flows are repeatable and quantifiable and thus more amenable for analysis. Lab experiments demonstrated that the peacock cichlid, Aulonocara stuartgranti, uses its LL to detect flows generated by benthic invertebrates, but behavioral studies have been confounded by visual cues generated by live prey. Thus, a novel apparatus was designed to generate flows emanating from the substrate, thus mimicking natural benthic prey, so that LL-mediated prey detection behavior could be analyzed in the absence of other sensory stimuli. Five fish were trained to respond to an artificial flow (Type I –“pulsed”; ~3 mm/s) and then fish were treated with cobalt chloride to temporarily ablate the LL. Fish participated in behavioral trials, in which tubes with and without flow were presented in pairs, in the two days before, the day of, and daily up to 21 days post-treatment to track the loss and subsequent recovery of flow sensing behavior. Fish lost the ability to identify flows on the day of treatment, the number of positive responses to flow returned to pre-treatment levels by Day 3, and the intensity of responses recovered by Day 7. Other fishes similarly treated with cobalt chloride were stained with 4-Di-2-ASP either on day of treatment or later, up to 9 days post-treatment, demonstrated dramatic changes in fluorescence indicating the loss and return of functional hair cells, which followed the same time course as the recovery of flow sensing behavior. This is the first study to use an artificial water flow stimulus to investigate the role of the LL in a benthic feeding teleost. Supported by NSF grant IOS-0843307 to JFW.