Meeting Abstract
Despite the fact that fishes are well adapted for an aquatic lifestyle, many members of disparate teleost lineages can traverse the terrestrial environment. Rather than having robust fins that act as limbs, many amphibious fish have evolved towards the opposite trend: pectoral and pelvic fin reduction or the absence of these fins and extreme elongation of the body or tail. Highly elongate fishes tend to move by axial undulation-lateral movement of the body in which sinusoidal waves are produced, similar to snakes. Highly elongate fish that are capable of terrestrial excursions tend to live at the interface of mud flats, sand, and the rocky intertidal. Despite the fact that the elongate body plan has evolved multiple times in bony fishes, terrestrial locomotion has been studied in only two taxa: the American eel, Anguilla rostrata, and the ropefish, Erpetoichthys calabricus. In this study, we examine the ability of the snowflake moray, Echidna nebulosa, to traverse a pebble substrate. The pebble substrate had four combinations of treatments: wet, dry, unanchored and anchored. Our preliminary data suggests that substrate type has an effect on the continuity of locomotion. We also discovered that substrate type had an effect on the locomotor behavior employed. While lateral undulation was commonly observed, we also observed rectilinear locomotion and individuals gripping onto the substrate using lateral expansion of their bodies. This suggests that the snowflake moray may exhibit a diversity of locomotor behaviors similar to terrestrial snakes.
