Evolution Of Hearing In Vertebrates Research Articles

Operant conditioning as a tool to assess hearing abilities in sharks.

Sharks (elasmobranchs) are an ancient, diverse group of fishes, representing a basal stage in the evolution of vertebrate hearing. Yet, our understanding of behavioural measures of hearing abilities in sharks is limited. To address this, an operant conditioning paradigm was designed, and scalloped hammerhead Sphyrna lewini and rig (spotted estuary smooth hound) Mustelus lenticulatus were successfully trained to respond to pure-tone acoustic stimuli from an underwater speaker. After 2-3 weeks of training, both species showed distinctive responses to these acoustic stimuli and retained this behaviour when reinforced. S. lewini responded to a 400 Hz pulsed tone with an abrupt increase in tailbeat frequency (97 beats per 30 s vs. 69 beats for a 2 kHz control and 70 beats for no signal) and sustained vigorous swimming (arousal response) for at least 30 s. In response to a 200 Hz pulsed tone, M. lenticulatus visited a target area under the speaker significantly more frequently (13.4 ± 4.3 times per minute vs. 1.4 ± 1.5 times for a 1.2 kHz control and 0.9 ± 0.01 times for no signal) and swam circles under the speaker to search for food. The authors used S. lewini arousal responses to pure-tone stimuli of 40, 80, 200, 400, 600 and 800 Hz to generate a provisional hearing-threshold curve. The results show that S. lewini adapts to low-frequency hearing (greatest sensitivity at 200 Hz, upper limit 800 Hz), which is like other coastal pelagic sharks that have been investigated so far. Despite challenges operant acoustic conditioning studies are a viable method for revealing auditory capabilities of sharks.

From Blind Cave Fish to the Tappan Zee Bridge – A Tale of “Translational Neuroethology”

Event Abstract Back to Event From Blind Cave Fish to the Tappan Zee Bridge – A Tale of “Translational Neuroethology” Arthur N. Popper1* 1 University of Maryland, Department of Biology, United States Over the more than 45 years since I started working on fish hearing there has been a substantial change in the way that the public views what we scientists do and how we do it. In contrast to past years, society today expects that scientists will ask and answer questions of relatively immediate social value. Indeed, the word “translational” has entered the vocabulary of much of science. Thus, where we once thought only in terms of answering excellent basic science questions, the current, and growing, expectation is that research today will be reasonably closely tied to human needs. In this presentation I am going to talk about the research that has been the central theme of most of my scientific career – how, what, and why fish hear, and the evolution of vertebrate hearing. Indeed, my research started out with trying to understand what fish hear, and then continued to include questions on such topics as: the morphology and ultrastructure of the auditory system; development, regeneration, and evolution of sensory hair cells and the ear; the physiology of the inner ear; why animals hear; and the neuroethology of fish ultrasound detection. And along with way I digressed a bit into work on sharks and marine mammals, and also edited a few books. However, more recently I have “reinvented” myself so that while I retain my fundamental interest in basic auditory neuroethology, the specific questions I now ask enable me to make direct contributions to solving some quite interesting and important societal problems. These tend to focus on how the addition of very substantial and intense man-made sounds to the environment can affect animals, and how to evaluate and mitigate those effects. Indeed, my personal “translation” has become a great deal of fun, and has led me in new and exciting directions I would not have imagined even 10 years ago. Keywords: anthropogenic, bioacoustics, Ear, evolution, fish, Hearing, Sound Conference: Tenth International Congress of Neuroethology, College Park. Maryland USA, United States, 5 Aug - 10 Aug, 2012. Presentation Type: Plenary Address (including special lectures) (Note, these individuals have already been invited) Topic: Sensory: Audition Citation: Popper AN (2012). From Blind Cave Fish to the Tappan Zee Bridge – A Tale of “Translational Neuroethology”. Conference Abstract: Tenth International Congress of Neuroethology. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnbeh.2012.27.00030 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 27 Apr 2012; Published Online: 07 Jul 2012. * Correspondence: Dr. Arthur N Popper, University of Maryland, Department of Biology, College Park, Maryland, 20742, United States, apopper@umd.edu Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Arthur N Popper Google Arthur N Popper Google Scholar Arthur N Popper PubMed Arthur N Popper Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

The Body Ear

From dusk until midnight, nearly every day of the year, a deafening din floods Puerto Rico's rain forests. Every few seconds, male Eleutherodactylus coqui frogs trumpet their co-qui mating call in competition with the blaring advertisements of seven other frog species and the dissonant chorus of rasping, chirping, buzzing insects. The animal orchestra creates such a loud cacophony that researchers working in the forest say they have a hard time hearing themselves think. Yet the male and female coqui frogs and their amphibian compatriots somehow sort through the pandemonium, separating the melodious acoustic wheat of their own species from the chaotic chaff of other creatures' chants. Exactly how the coqui and other frogs discriminate sounds in such noisy environments has long fascinated neuroethologist M. Narins at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). He and others have found that amphibians employ a variety of communication strategies, including divvying up sound frequencies among different species, creating a louder fracas than their neighbors or producing periodic, easily recognizable calls. Most recently Narins and two associates have discovered that coqui frogs in particular may also be aided in pinpointing a sound's direction with an unusual sound pathway: through the lungs. They reported in the March PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES (Vol. 85, No.5) that when a sound wave hits a frog's side, it can travel through the airfilled lungs, up through the voice box, into the eustachian tubes and on to the eardrum. Peter and his colleagues have found what may be a totally unexpected medium for processing sound in these species of frogs, says Steven Greenberg, an auditory neurophysiologist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. makes us rethink the ways in which sounds are localized in space, at least by frogs. This and findings in other animals are adding some interesting twists to the study of the evolution of hearing in vertebrates. Humans and most other mammals can tell a sound's direction by comparing the vibrations the sound waves induce in each eardrum. The waves entering the ear nearest the source are more intense and arrive sooner than do those entering the far ear. But to exploit this intensity and timing difference, the sound's wavelength must be much smaller than the distance between the ears. Since the upper audible limit of most mammals falls within 20,000 to 60,000 hertz, this condition is usually met in even the smallest mammals.

Speculations about noise and the evolution of vertebrate hearing

Two of the most conspicuous and celebrated properties of human hearing — the abilities to discriminate pitch and to localize sound sources, may have been secondary derivations to which the ear was preadapted by having evolved in the inevitable presence of noise.

Some aspects of the evolution of hearing in vertebrates.

Comparative anatomical and electrophysiological studies can trace the evolution of vertebrate hearing.

The Evolution of Vertebrate Hearing

The Evolution of Vertebrate Hearing

The localization and analysis of the responses to vibration from the isolated elasmobranch labyrinth; a contribution to the problem of the evolution of hearing in vertebrates.

The localization and analysis of the responses to vibration from the isolated elasmobranch labyrinth; a contribution to the problem of the evolution of hearing in vertebrates.