Department of Biology, Cape Breton University, Sydney, NS, Canada, B1P 6L2.
J Exp Biol. 2013 Jul 1;216(Pt 13):2459-68. doi: 10.1242/jeb.082735.
Gymnotiform weakly electric fish produce an electric signal to sense their environment and communicate with conspecifics. Although the generation of such relatively large electric signals over an entire lifetime is expected to be energetically costly, supporting evidence to date is equivocal. In this article, we first provide a theoretical analysis of the energy budget underlying signal production. Our analysis suggests that wave-type and pulse-type species invest a similar fraction of metabolic resources into electric signal generation, supporting previous evidence of a trade-off between signal amplitude and frequency. We then consider a comparative and evolutionary framework in which to interpret and guide future studies. We suggest that species differences in signal generation and plasticity, when considered in an energetics context, will not only help to evaluate the role of energetic constraints in the evolution of signal diversity but also lead to important general insights into the energetics of bioelectric signal generation.
电鳗目弱电鱼产生电信号来感知环境并与同类交流。尽管整个生命周期中产生如此相对较大的电信号预计会耗费大量的能量，但迄今为止，支持这一观点的证据尚无定论。在本文中，我们首先对信号产生的能量预算进行了理论分析。我们的分析表明，波型和脉冲型物种在电信号产生上投入了相似比例的代谢资源，这支持了之前关于信号幅度和频率之间权衡的证据。然后，我们考虑了一个比较和进化的框架，以解释和指导未来的研究。我们认为，在能量学背景下考虑信号产生和可塑性方面的物种差异，不仅有助于评估能量限制在信号多样性进化中的作用，而且还会对生物电信号产生的能量学产生重要的普遍见解。
