Department of Biological Sciences and JP Scott Center for Neuroscience, Mind and Behavior, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH 43403, USA.
J Comp Physiol A Neuroethol Sens Neural Behav Physiol. 2010 Nov;196(11):853-67. doi: 10.1007/s00359-010-0567-8. Epub 2010 Aug 21.
When introduced into a novel environment that limits or prevents vision, a variety of species including Mexican blind cavefish (Astyanax mexicanus) exhibit wall-following behaviors. It is often assumed that wall following serves an exploratory function, but this assertion remains untested against alternative artifactual explanations. Here, we test whether wall following by cavefish is a purposeful behavior in which fish actively maintain a close relationship with the wall, or an artifactual consequence of being enclosed in a small concave arena, in which fish turn slightly to avoid the wall whenever it impedes forward movement. Wall-following abilities of fish were tested in a large, goggle-shaped arena, where forward motion along the convex wall was unimpeded. In this circumstance, cavefish continued to follow the wall at frequencies significantly above chance levels. Lateral line inactivation significantly reduced the ability of fish to follow convex, but not concave or straight, walls. Wall-following abilities of normal fish decreased with decreasing radius of wall convex curvature. Our results demonstrate that cavefish actively follow walls of varying contours. Radius-of-curvature effects coupled with the difficulties posed by convex walls to lateral line-deprived fish suggest a partially complementary use of tactile and lateral line information to regulate distance from the wall.
当进入一个限制或阻止视觉的新环境时，包括墨西哥盲眼洞穴鱼（Astyanax mexicanus）在内的多种物种都会表现出贴壁行为。人们通常认为贴壁行为具有探索功能，但这一说法尚未通过对替代人为解释的测试来验证。在这里，我们测试了洞穴鱼的贴壁行为是一种有意的行为，即鱼主动与墙壁保持密切关系，还是由于被封闭在一个小的凹面竞技场中而产生的人为后果，在这种情况下，鱼只要感觉到墙壁阻碍了前进，就会稍微转弯以避开墙壁。我们在一个大型的护目镜状竞技场中测试了鱼的贴壁能力，在这个竞技场中，沿着凸面墙壁的前进运动不受阻碍。在这种情况下，洞穴鱼继续以明显高于随机水平的频率跟随墙壁。侧线失活显著降低了鱼跟随凸面墙壁的能力，但对凹面或直壁墙壁没有影响。正常鱼的贴壁能力随墙壁凸曲率半径的减小而降低。我们的结果表明，洞穴鱼会主动跟随不同轮廓的墙壁。曲率半径效应以及凸壁对侧线剥夺鱼类造成的困难表明，触觉和侧线信息的部分互补使用可以调节与墙壁的距离。
