Abstract
Adaptations to an organism's environment often involve sensory system modifications. In this study, we address how evolutionary divergence in sensory perception relates to the physiological coding of stimuli. Mormyrid fishes that can detect subtle variations in electric communication signals encode signal waveform into spike-timing differences between sensory receptors. In contrast, the receptors of species insensitive to waveform variation produce spontaneously oscillating potentials. We found that oscillating receptors respond to electric pulses by resetting their phase, resulting in transient synchrony among receptors that encodes signal timing and location, but not waveform. These receptors were most sensitive to frequencies found only in the collective signals of groups of conspecifics, and this was correlated with increased behavioral responses to these frequencies. Thus, different perceptual capabilities correspond to different receptor physiologies. We hypothesize that these divergent mechanisms represent adaptations for different social environments. Our findings provide the first evidence for sensory coding through oscillatory synchrony.
Highlights
Evolutionary change in sensory systems can have profound effects on perception and behavior (Carlson and Arnegard, 2011; Carlson, 2012; Baldwin et al, 2014)
We investigate how evolutionary divergence in sensory perception relates to differences in peripheral sensory coding
We found that the receptors of P. microphthalmus fire spikes (Figure 1A), just like other mormyrids with broadly distributed receptors and electric organ discharge (EOD) waveform sensitivity
Summary
Evolutionary change in sensory systems can have profound effects on perception and behavior (Carlson and Arnegard, 2011; Carlson, 2012; Baldwin et al, 2014). Anatomical modifications of sensory receptors and the associated brain pathway that processes electric communication signals resulted in a newfound ability to detect subtle variations in these signals. This perceptual expansion led to a dramatic increase in the rates of signal evolution and species diversification. How these anatomical and perceptual differences relate to physiological differences in the underlying information processing mechanisms was unknown. We investigate how evolutionary divergence in sensory perception relates to differences in peripheral sensory coding
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