Stewart William J, Nair Arjun, Jiang Houshuo, McHenry Matthew J
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-2525, USA.
Department of Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543-1050, USA.
J Exp Biol. 2014 Dec 15;217(Pt 24):4328-36. doi: 10.1242/jeb.111773.
Prey fish possess a remarkable ability to sense and evade an attack from a larger fish. Despite the importance of these events to the biology of fishes, it remains unclear how sensory cues stimulate an effective evasive maneuver. Here, we show that larval zebrafish (Danio rerio) evade predators using an escape response that is stimulated by the water flow generated by an approaching predator. Measurements of the high-speed responses of larvae in the dark to a robotic predator suggest that larvae respond to the subtle flows in front of the predator using the lateral line system. This flow, known as the bow wave, was visualized and modeled with computational fluid dynamics. According to the predictions of the model, larvae direct their escape away from the side of their body exposed to more rapid flow. This suggests that prey fish use a flow reflex that enables predator evasion by generating a directed maneuver at high speed. These findings demonstrate a sensory-motor mechanism that underlies a behavior that is crucial to the ecology and evolution of fishes.
猎物鱼具有非凡的能力来感知并躲避来自大型鱼类的攻击。尽管这些事件对鱼类生物学很重要，但目前仍不清楚感官线索是如何刺激有效的躲避动作的。在这里，我们表明斑马鱼幼体（Danio rerio）通过一种逃避反应来躲避捕食者，这种反应是由接近的捕食者产生的水流所刺激的。对黑暗中幼体对机器捕食者的高速反应的测量表明，幼体利用侧线系统对捕食者前方的细微水流做出反应。这种水流，即弓形波，通过计算流体动力学进行了可视化和建模。根据模型预测，幼体将它们的逃避方向指向身体暴露于更快水流的一侧。这表明猎物鱼利用一种水流反射，通过高速产生定向动作来实现捕食者躲避。这些发现证明了一种感觉运动机制，它是对鱼类生态和进化至关重要的一种行为的基础。
