Meeting Abstract
Elasmobranchs use electroreception to localize prey at short distances. While this sensory system has been well studied, the methods by which prey bioelectric fields are generated and the voltage and frequency characteristics of the bioelectric fields are less studied. Additionally, electroreception literature often states that prey body size is positively correlated with voltage, however, there is a complete lack of empirical evidence supporting this claim. Therefore, the goal of this study is to survey bioelectric potential strength across a range of sizes (length and mass) of invertebrate, teleost, and elasmobranch species. As previously reported teleosts possessed stronger electric potentials (361 ± 83.5 µV) than both elasmobranchs (99.7 ± 1.6 µV) and invertebrates (44.9 ± 8.0 µV), which is likely related to different osmoregulatory strategies used by these groups. Within each of these groups, there was no relationship with length/width or mass. However, among elasmobranchs batoids tended to have larger electric potentials than sharks. This difference may be attributed to the physical flow of water and the ions within it, or as a result of physiological osmoregulation that occurs at the gills. Therefore, future work will examine electric potentials within the context of these physical and morphological features (water volume, flow rate and gill surface area) of the respiratory organs.
